Short Synopsis
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is a vivid portrait of life and death in a turn-of-the-century American meat-packing factory. A grim indictment that led to government regulations of the food industry, The Jungle is Sinclair's extraordinary contribution to literature and social reform.

Full Synopsis
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 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," and the bewildering chaos of urban life. The Jungle, a story so shocking that it launched a government investigation, re-creates 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.