Upton Sinclair and the other American century

by Kevin Mattson

"Upton Sinclair was the first celebrity to run for governor of California. He published an eponymous magazine and lectured Americans on war, wages, diet, education, the media, and anything else he could think of. He wrote books fast, made important friends faster, and made enemies fastest of all. He won a Pulitzer, but not for the most important book he ever wrote, The Jungle. He wrote a book that Disney made into one of his worst movies. His love life was a national scandal. He lost a fortune financing (on Charlie Chaplin's advice) a Sergei Eisenstein film the director never finished. He lived and wrote and argued his way through World War I, workers' revolts, frivolous flappers, Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II, and even, at the end, Vietnam. Upton Sinclair never thought he'd be the twentieth century's greatest novelist, but he may have been its greatest progressive activist. He was unquestionably a one-of-a-kind American." "With the publication of his ferocious expose