The Jungle » (Standard Edition (1906))

CHRISTOPHER PHELPS is associate professor of History at The Ohio State University at Mansfield. A specialist in twentieth-century American intellectual and political history, he is the author of Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and Pragmatist (1997), in addition to numerous journal articles and reviews. Most recently, he edited and introduced Max Shachtman's Race and Revolution for Verso (2003). He has twice received the Fulbright Award: in 2000 to teach American philosophy and intellectual history in Hungary, and in 2004-2005 to serve as Distinguished Chair in American Studies for Poland.

This dramatic exposi of the Chicago meat-packing industry prompted an investigation by Theodore Roosevelt which culminated in the pure-food legislation of 1906.

New York Times Book Review

Mr. Sinclair in The Jungle has given the world a close, a striking, and, we may say, in many ways 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. . . .He has not written a second Uncle Tom's Cabin. -- New York Times review, March 1906; Books of the Century