Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual
By Lauren Coodley
Had Upton Sinclair not written a single book after The Jungle, he would still be famous. But Sinclair was a mere twenty-five years old when he wrote The Jungle, and over the next sixty-five years he wrote nearly eighty more books and won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He was also a filmmaker, labor activist, women’s rights advocate, and health pioneer on a grand scale. This new biography of Sinclair underscores his place in the American story as a social, political, and cultural force, a man who more than any other disrupted and documented his era in the name of social justice.
Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual shows us Sinclair engaged in one cause after another, some surprisingly relevant today—the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, the depredations of the oil industry, the wrongful imprisonment of the Wobblies, and the perils of unchecked capitalism and concentrated media. Throughout, Lauren Coodley provides a new perspective for looking at Sinclair’s prodigiously productive life. Coodley’s book reveals a consistent streak of feminism, both in Sinclair’s relationships with women—wives, friends, and activists—and in his interest in issues of housework and childcare, temperance and diet. This biography will forever alter our picture of this complicated, unconventional, often controversial man whose whole life was dedicated to helping people understand how society was run, by whom, and for whom.
Also available at select Napa book sellers including Napa Bookmine.
Book TV: Lauren Coodley, “Upton Sinclair”
REVIEWS
In this engaging and ambitious biography Lauren Coodley takes a fresh perspective on the life of the zealous muckraker Upton Sinclair. Her book necessarily addresses many facets of Sinclair’s life that would be familiar to historians (such as the publication of The Jungle and the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, Sinclair’s End Poverty in California (epic) program, and his ill-fated gubernatorial campaign in 1934). This book really shines in its treatment of lesser-known aspects of Sinclair’s socialism, such as his contemplation of historical Christianity and attempts to reconcile religion and socialism, and his scathing attacks on higher education…
Sept. 2015
Lauren Coodley’s perceptive account should awaken fresh interest in one of the twentieth century’s more fascinating cultural figures and his extraordinary—sadly, mostly forgotten—body of work.
What a difference a feminist perspective can make! . . . This is the first biography by a historian familiar with the new scholarship on twentieth-century women’s rights activists who is able to contextualize Sinclair as their contemporary.
Upton Sinclair traversed the first half of the twentieth century like a rogue star. His prodigious writing and activism in the service of social justice perturbed the status quo, awakening millions to everything from appalling working conditions, poisoned food, and media bias to the rise of fascism and environmental decline. Yet his determination to lead a balanced and healthy life led some biographers to disparage him as less than a full man. Lauren Coodley rescues Sinclair from such critical condescension and reminds us of the many lives that he packed into one even as he moved the lives of both the common and the great.
*Starred Review* “If Upton Sinclair had never written a word beyond The Jungle, his stellar reputation would still be safe. The 1906 publication of this revolutionary novel exposing the horrors of the U.S. meat-packing industry led to sweeping food-safety laws and is still widely read today in high-school English classes. Yet, as historian Coodley emphasizes in this reverent and perceptive biography, Sinclair wrote prolifically and broadly in a variety of forms throughout his entire life, beginning with dime novels in his teens onto essays, plays, and film scripts. His novel, Dragon’s Teeth, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943. Apart from Sinclair’s literary oeuvre, he was a tireless crusader for the rights of factory workers, coal miners, and women. While taking the full measure of Sinclair’s very active life, from his Baltimore childhood to his three marriages, the last in his eighties, Coodley reveals many surprising details, including his friendships with Henry Ford and Jane Addams and his near-miss election bid for California governor. Coodley’s compelling (if, at times, academic) biography is an invaluable look at Sinclair’s full life and influential work and how much his long battle against worker oppression remains relevant in today’s corporate and media-driven world.”
“Known primarily as the author of The Jungle (written when he was only 25), Upton Sinclair went on to produce nearly 80 more books, and, as discussed in this skillful biography, worked as an activist for causes including the labor, temperance, and women’s rights movements. Historian Coodley (California: A Multicultural Documentary History) narrates little-known aspects of Sinclair’s life, such as his gubernatorial campaign in California in 1934, in which he faced a barrage of attacks from newspapers and Hollywood studios; these tactics disgusted so many involved that it helped create a liberal climate in Hollywood. Born in Baltimore in 1878, Sinclair learned about political action from his mother, a determined temperance supporter. Indeed, Sinclair had seen the effects of drink on his alcoholic father. He threw himself into his activism, frequently risking, and at times enduring, arrest. In addition, he befriended many female leaders of the movements he supported, such as Margaret Sanger and Jane Addams. Workers’ rights were his first love: Sinclair hoped that readers of his celebrated book The Jungle would be outraged by the brutality that the workers endured. Coodley’s biography should renew interest in the works of this passionate writer.”
“Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil! was the basis for Paul Thomas Anderson’s film There Will Be Blood, and director David Schimmer has spoken of adapting Sinclair’s most influential novel, The Jungle. But who remembers that the muckraking author took an active hand in filmmaking? That’s one of the revelations in Lauren Coodley’s cogent, critical biography, Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual (published by University of Nebraska Press).”
Author of A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of “Ramparts” Magazine Changed America
“As a best-selling novelist, trailblazing muckraker, and major political candidate, Upton Sinclair practically embodied the Progressive movement for much of the twentieth century. Lauren Coodley adroitly surveys Sinclair’s astounding achievements, but she also shows how his responses to two key social movements—temperance and women’s suffrage—distinguished him from most of his male peers. An important story, well told, about an immensely influential yet consistently underrated American hero.”