Upton Sinclair
California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
Had Upton Sinclair not written a single book after The Jungle, he would still be famous. But Sinclair was a mere twenty-five years old when he wrote The Jungle, and over the next sixty-five years he wrote nearly eighty more books and won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He was also a filmmaker, labor activist, women’s rights advocate, and health pioneer on a grand scale. This new biography of Sinclair underscores his place in the American story as a social, political, and cultural force, a man who more than any other disrupted and documented his era in the name of social justice.
Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual shows us Sinclair engaged in one cause after another, some surprisingly relevant today—the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, the depredations of the oil industry, the wrongful imprisonment of the Wobblies, and the perils of unchecked capitalism and concentrated media. Throughout, Lauren Coodley provides a new perspective for looking at Sinclair’s prodigiously productive life. Coodley’s book reveals a consistent streak of feminism, both in Sinclair’s relationships with women—wives, friends, and activists—and in his interest in issues of housework and childcare, temperance and diet. This biography will forever alter our picture of this complicated, unconventional, often controversial man whose whole life was dedicated to helping people understand how society was run, by whom, and for whom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Known primarily as the author of The Jungle (written when he was only 25), Upton Sinclair went on to produce nearly 80 more books, and, as discussed in this skillful biography, worked as an activist for causes including the labor, temperance, and women's rights movements. Historian Coodley (California: A Multicultural Documentary History) narrates little-known aspects of Sinclair's life, such as his gubernatorial campaign in California in 1934, in which he faced a barrage of attacks from newspapers and Hollywood studios; these tactics disgusted so many involved that it helped create "a liberal climate in Hollywood." Born in Baltimore in 1878, Sinclair learned about political action from his mother, a determined temperance supporter. Indeed, Sinclair had seen the effects of drink on his alcoholic father. He threw himself into his activism, frequently risking, and at times enduring, arrest. In addition, he befriended many female leaders of the movements he supported, such as Margaret Sanger and Jane Addams. Workers' rights were his first love: Sinclair hoped that readers of his celebrated book The Jungle would be outraged by "the brutality that the workers endured." Coodley's biography should renew interest in the works of this passionate writer. 27 illus.
