Synopses & Reviews
The first edited volume of work by the legendary undercover journalist
Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran, Nellie Bly was one of the first and best female journalists in America and quickly became a national phenomenon in the late 1800s, with a board game based on her adventures and merchandise inspired by the clothes she wore. Bly gained fame for being the first girl stunt reporter,” writing stories that no one at the time thought a woman could or should write, including an exposé of patient treatment at an insane asylum and a travelogue from her record-breaking race around the world without a chaperone. This volume, the only printed and edited collection of Blys writings, includes her best known worksTen Days in a Mad-House, Six Months in Mexico, and Around the World in Seventy-Two Daysas well as many lesser known pieces that capture the breadth of her career from her fierce opinion pieces to her remarkable World War I reporting. As 2014 marks the 150th anniversary of Blys work, this collection celebrates her work, spirit, and vital place in history.
Review
"[A] brilliant study of the great industries of Chicago....The language Mr. Sinclair employs is appropriate to the scene, the action, and the characters of his drama....The experienced reader will at once perceive that Mr. Sinclair has taken Zola for his model. The likeness is more than striking it fairly forces itself upon the attention of the reader." New York Times
Synopsis
Two thousand six marks the one hundredth anniversary of one of the most powerful, provocative, and most enduring proletarian novels ever published in the United States.
Upton Sinclair's dramatic and deeply moving story exposed the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the nineteenth century and brought into sharp moral focus the apalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share of the American dream. Denounced by the conservative press as an un-American libel on the meatpacking industry, the book was championed by more progressive thinkers, including then president Theodore Roosevelt, and was a major catalyst to the passing of the Pure Food and Meat Inspection Act, which has tremendous impact to this day.
Features an introduction from Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser and dramatic cover illustrations by graphic artist Charles Burns.
Synopsis
Upton Sinclair's dramatic and deeply moving story exposed the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the nineteenth century and brought into sharp moral focus the apalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share of the American dream. Denounced by the conservative press as an un-American libel on the meatpacking industry, the book was championed by more progressive thinkers, including then president Theodore Roosevelt, and was a major catalyst to the passing of the Pure Food and Meat Inspection act, which has tremendous impact to this day.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators."
Synopsis
One of the most harrowing novels ever written, this vivid depiction of the meatpacking industry in Chicago not only aroused the indignation of the public but was instrumental in bringing about the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.
In this powerful book we enter the world of Jurgis Rudkus, a young Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in America fired with dreams of wealth, freedom, and opportunity. And we discover, with him, the astonishing truth babout "Packingtown," the busy, flourishing, filthy Chicago stockyards, where new world visions perish in a jungle of human suffering. Upton Sinclair, master of the" muckraking" novel, here explores the workingman's lot at the turn of the century: the backbreaking labor, the injustices of "wage-slavery," the bewildering chaos of urban life.
The Jungle, a story so shocking that it launched a government investigation, recreates this startling chapter of our history in unflinching detail. Always a vigorous champion of political reform, Sinclair is also a gripping storyteller, and his 1906 novel stands as one of the most important and moving works in the literature of social change.
Synopsis
A collection of the articles and writings of famed American journalist Nellie Bly.
About the Author
Upton Sinclair was born into an impoverished Baltimore family on September 20, 1878. At fifteen, he began writing a series of dime novels in order to pay for his education at the City College of New York. He was later accepted to do graduate work at Columbia, and while there he published a number of novels, including
The Journal of Arthur Stirling (1903) and
Manassas (1904).
Sinclair's breakthrough came in 1906 with the publication of The Jungle, a scathing indictment of the vile health and working conditions of the Chicago meat-packing industry. The work, which won him great literary praise, helped in the passage of the pure food laws during the Progressive Era. He also joined the company of several writers and journalists of the time who were branded as "muckrakers" by President Theodore Roosevelt.
Sinclair used the money from The Jungle to begin a utopian experiment, the Helicon Hall Colony of Englewood, New Jersey. In 1915 he moved to California where he unsuccessfully ran for public office on four occasions. He wrote several politically progressive pamphlets and became a powerful figure in California's Democratic party, almost winning the governorship in 1934. After his defeat he continued to write books. Later works include World's End (1940), Dragon's Teeth (1942), which won him a Pulitzer Prize, O Shepherd, Speak! (1949) and Another Pamela (1950).
Charles Burns, a former contributor to Art Spiegelman's Raw magazine, is an illustrator whose work has included the covers of major magazines and CDs. His most well-known comics are Black Hole, Big Baby, and Skin Deep.
Eric Schlosser is the author of Fast Food Nation, Reefer Madness, and Chew on This. He has written for many publications including Rolling Stone, the Atlantic Monthly and the New Yorker and has recieved a number of journalism honors, including a National Magazine Award.
Ronald Gottesman was born in Boston and earned degrees from the University of Massachusetts and from Colgate and Indiana universities. He has taught literature, film studies, and humanities courses at Northwestern, Indiana, and Rutgers universities, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Southern California, where for nine years he directed the Center for the Humanities. Founding editor of the Quarterly Review of Film Studies and Humanities in Society, Professor Gottesman is editor and author of many articles and books on literature and film, including three on Upton Sinclair. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in psychoanalysis.