“When people ask me what has happened in my long lifetime I do not refer them to the newspaper files and to the authorities, but to (Sinclair’s) novels.” -George Bernard Shaw “Practically alone among the American writers of his generation, Sinclair put to the American public the fundamental questions raised by capitalism in such a way that they could not escape them.” -Edmund Wilson Upton Sinclair’s 1906 bestseller The Jungle is a startling and powerful novel depicting the plight of Jurgis Rudkus, a Slavic worker who immigrated to the United States in the early 20th Century for a better life. His dream of a finding a job, building a family, and buying a home are initially fulfilled in the Union Stock Yards in Chicago. Work in the meatpacking industry proves to be a harrowing and desperate existence, and his personal life is beset by a succession of hardships and tragedy. As bleak as his journey is, Jurgis finally finds his light in a new-found political ideology. The Jungle is