The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Title: The Jungle

Author: Upton Sinclair

Genre: Classics

Pages: 458

Rating:  3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Rory Gilmore (Perpetual); Classics — Nonfiction; Mount TBR; Dusty Bookshelf; 52 Books — W37

How I Got It: I own it!

1906 bestseller shockingly reveals intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards as it tells the brutally grim story of a Slavic family that emigrates to America full of optimism but soon descends into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and despair. A fiercely realistic American classic that will haunt readers long after they’ve finished the last page.

Just to clarify: I know this isn’t strictly a nonfiction book.  However, it reads in parts like nonfiction.  Plus it was written as an expose of the meat packing industry.  So, I have decided to include it in my nonfiction category for the Back to the Classics Challenge.

Moving to the book… I wasn’t as excited about this tome as I thought I would be.  I am a fan of Theodore Drieser and the muckrakers of the Progressive Era.  But, I just wasn’t a huge fan of this one.  Sinclair rambled way too much for my liking.  I wished he would focus more on the issues of the meat packing industry than the fictional story of Jurgis Rudkus.  I wanted this to be more of a nonfiction volume such as Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives.  Overall, a bit of a disappointment, but still a fairly interesting read.