Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) had a colorful life, to say the least. He was a social activist and one of his most famous works is 'The Jungle' which exposed the terrible conditions of the meat-packing industry in Chicago. He was the Democrat nominee for Governor of Califonia in 1934 but was unsuccessful.

First published in 1962, on the suggestion of his readers throughout his expansive writing career, this is the self-penned biography of Upton Sinclair, author of hundreds of novels, plays, homilies, diatribes and pamphlets. Written at the age 83, Sinclair at last allows his loyal readership to glean an in-depth look at the man who discovered the Jungle in Armours Meat Industry at 28, founded a Utopian co-operative in 1908, and who muckraked through all of America “to become the finest and most devoted polemicist this country has seen”—from his childhood beginnings in Maryland to his youth in New York through to publication of his first novels and political career and beyond. Of his work, Upton Sinclair says: “The English Queen Mary, who failed to hold the French port of Calais, said that when she died, the word ‘Calais’ would be found written on her heart. I don’t know whether anyone will care to examine my heart, but if they do they will find two words there—’Social Justice.’ For that is what I have believed in and fought for during sixty-three of my eighty-four books. “His is an intellectual’s book dealing with one who made intellectual history, and no self-respecting intellectual tradesman will fail to read it.”—Kirkus Review Illustrated with 17 black-and-white photographs.

The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair, first published in 1962, is the author's recounting and examination of his life and large body of published works. Beginning with his his childhood in Baltimore, Sinclair describes his struggles with his alcoholic father, his long-term estrangement from his mother, his education, and the start of his writing career. He has success writing short stories and magazine articles, and achieves prominence with the publication of The Jungle in 1906, his exposé of the Chicago meat-packing industry. Many of his books likewise reflected his deep sense of social justice. Sinclair also ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Socialist, and was the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of California in 1934, though his highly progressive campaign was defeated. Sinclair would go on to write nearly 100 books and plays until his death in New Jersey in 1968. Included are 8 pages of illustrations.

Few American writers have revealed their private as well as their public selves so fully as Upton Sinclair, and virtually none over such a long lifetime (1878—1968). Sinclair’s writing, even at its most poignant or electrifying, blurred the line between politics and art–and, indeed, his life followed a similar arc. In Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, Anthony Arthur weaves the strands of Sinclair’s contentious public career and his often-troubled private life into a compelling personal narrative. An unassuming teetotaler with a fiery streak, called a propagandist by some, the most conservative of revolutionaries by others, Sinclair was such a driving force of history that one could easily mistake his life story for historical fiction. He counted dozens of epochal figures as friends or confidants, including Mark Twain, Jack London, Henry Ford, Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Albert Camus, and Carl Jung. Starting with The Jungle in 1906, Sinclair’s fiction and nonfiction helped to inform and mold American opinions about socialism, labor and industry, religion and philosophy, the excesses of the media, American political isolation and pacifism, civil liberties, and mental and physical health. In his later years, Sinclair twice reinvented himself, first as the Democratic candidate for governor of California in 1934, and later, in his sixties and seventies, as a historical novelist. In 1943 he won a Pulitzer Prize for Dragon’s Teeth, one of eleven novels featuring super-spy Lanny Budd. Outside the literary realm, the ever-restless Sinclair was seemingly everywhere: forming Utopian artists’ colonies, funding and producing Sergei Eisenstein’s film documentaries, and waging consciousness-raising political campaigns. Even when he wasn’t involved in progressive causes or counterculture movements, his name often was invoked by them–an arrangement that frequently embroiled Sinclair in controversy. Sinclair’ s passion and optimistic zeal inspired America, but privately he could be a frustrated, petty man who connected better with his readers than with members of his own family. His life with his first wife, Meta, his son David, and various friends and professional acquaintances was a web of conflict and strain. Personally and professionally ambitious, Sinclair engaged in financial speculation, although his wealth-generating schemes often benefited his pet causes–and he lobbied as tirelessly for professional recognition and awards as he did for government reform. As the tenor of his work would suggest, Sinclair was supremely human. In Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, Anthony Arthur offers an engrossing and enlightening account of Sinclair’s life and the country he helped to transform. Taking readers from the Reconstruction South to the rise of American power to the pinnacle of Hollywood culture to the Civil Rights era, this is historical biography at its entertaining and thought-provoking finest.

King Coal explores the lives of coal miners in early 20th century America. The story follows a privileged student who takes a job as a miner to gain firsthand experience of harsh conditions and mistreatment of workers. The protagonist is shocked by what he discovers and becomes an advocate for the miners, leading them in their fight against the mine owners and the political system that supports them. Sinclair’s writing style is known for its vivid descriptions and its ability to bring to life the characters and their struggles. Like much of his work, King Coal is a fictitious account of real issues. The novel is based on the author’s research in Colorado during the coal strikes of 1913–14, and is considered a classic of the muckraking genre that exposed the social and economic problems of the time. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

First edition of Sinclair's savage satire, loosely based on the life and career of Edward L. Doheny, and the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding administration. Although Sinclair's famous novel The Jungle deals with Chicago's meatpacking industry, he moved west to Pasadena in 1916 and began writing novels set in California, the best of which was Oil!, the story of the education of Bunny Ross, son of wildcat oil man Joe Ross after oil is discovered outside Los Angeles. The novel was the basis for Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film There Will Be Blood. In California Classics, Lawrence Clark Powell called Oil! "Sinclair's most sustained and best writing."