The Jungle

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 about "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 if our history in unflinching  detail. Always a vigorous champion on 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.