The Brass Check is Upton Sinclair's nearly autobiographical experiences with the press. Sinclair, most famous for writing about the meat packing plants in the early 1900's (in the Jungle), received a lot of bad press by capitalist owned newspapers. These periodicals openly attacked him, printed half-truths, or failed to give him credit when he was right. The book contains 445 pages of his experiences with the press. He laments that most papers sell by submitting to the whims of their advertisers and printing scare headlines. Providing a substantial amount of evidence, Sinclair shows how papers and magazines unfairly discredited him and his causes. Of particular interest are the Colorado coal miner strike and the conditions of the meat packing plants in Chicago. Probably only hard core Upton Sinclair fans will appreciate this book. Most of it was mundane and outdated. A lot of the players and events that he covered never made it to the history books and it was challenging to remain focused after hearing yet another story about a newspaper (some of which still exist today - Los Angeles Times, for example). Historians will appreciate the different perspective on history and fans of Upton Sinclair will get an up and close personal look at his personal life.

Lanny Budd -- a playboy, an art dealer who has Adolph Hitler as a client, and an American spy. Dragon Harvest is just one of several of the Lanny Budd series. But I haven't read the others yet. This one is good. I found particularly interesting the information about the origins of the Christian Identity movement being connected with Henry Ford, a well-known facist. Although Sinclair never names the Christian Identity movement by name, it is nonetheless unmistakeable when he describes the actions of Ford and the infamous Father Coughlin in the Detroit area through Lanny Budd's eyes. And the part about Hitler's fascination with psychics is not only a hoot, but provides tremendous page-turning excitement as well. These books are hard to find, but when you do, snap it up. That's what I'm doing, because they are entertaining and informative.

Upton Sinclair has given the reader a general overview of what life was like in Michigan when Henry Ford revolutionized the world with his invention of the automobile. Sinclair does this through following Abner Shutt from child to old age and his involvement with Henry Ford. Shutt is totally sold on the ideals and ethics of Henry Ford, but does this last? The Shutt family is consumed in the Ford machine, and every daily action revolves around Ford, the man and the machine. This book is very well written, and lets the reader view history as though he or she were living at the time with the Shutt family.

This excellant account of the race for governor in California offers unique insight into the tactics and motivations of the canidates and their supporters with a wry but rarely bitter pen. Written by Sinclair almost imediately after the conclusion of the race, this journal of sorts sheds first hand light on the California of 1934. A California that disturbingly resembles the America of today. The connection I made with the author's deepest values allows me to accept Upton Sinclair as worthy of my emulation. Read this.

This is not a great book. The story is simple, the characters are clichéd, and the message hits the reader with the subtlety of a caveman's club. It is reminiscent of a teen hero pulp novel; a socialist "Red Planet" perhaps. Based on that assessment this book probably deserves two stars. On the other hand, Sinclair did do an effective job of researching and documenting the labor injustices of that era. Also, his writing style is remains remarkably fluid, even if it is not a showcase for the beauty of the English language. I enjoyed this book and learned something from it, even if it is not Sinclair's highest art.

Muckraker, Upton Sinclair, tells the fictionalized story of the Wall Street panic of 1907. The panic, according to Sinclair, was orchestrated by several very powerful capitalists in order to dethrone a rival trust company. They did this because man's revenge over being smitten by a woman, to put the anti-trust President in his place, and greed. The ruin of the rival trust company caused a stock market crash and a bank rush which ultimately cost thousands their jobs and savings and put the entire world into financial turmoil.

The story is told through the eyes of Allan Montague -- a successful lawyer living in New York. Through the course of the story he becomes introduced to several power players -- many of whom have millions riding in the stock market. These big players, also use fronts and shill companies whose only purpose is to sell things -- they do not make anything. This gets the public and the government to invest in their companies which ultimately go bankrupt.

The players in the story aren't too terribly interested in money. They use it as points and live to out maneuver the other. Sinclair reveals the back room shanagans of the stock market and the manipulations they pulled on the market. In addition, he points out the press was unable to print the "truth" on account that many of the corporations owned the newspapers.

The book was a little hard to follow despite Sinclair's lucid writing style. There were many players in the story, many making brief and periodic appearances. Also, the economic theory behind the maneuverings could leave a reader a little bewildered if they aren't up on the subject of trusts, stocks, high finance and corporations. Although, I suspect that many of the manipulations the capitalists did have been corrected thanks to modern checks and safeguards, the book does reveal the vast amount of corruption on all levels of the American system: the government, banks, and other businesses manipulating other businesses. This book was almost a thriller / mystery and was entertaining and informative throughout.

Samuel the Seeker is a tongue in cheek version of a Horatio Alger book. Samuel starts off life as a naive farmer's boy who must leave home to find work in New York. Unfortunately, he never makes it to the big city and is waylaid in a medium-sized town that has problems of their own. He finds that employment is tough to find and that the odds are stacked against him.

Samuel's adventures mirror those of an Alger book. He finds employment by saving the life of a rich person. He is happy working there until he realizes the debauchery his employer practices. This goes against Samuel's Christian upbringing and again he hits the street in search of work. Ultimately, Samuel learns that the world isn't a friendly place. The church only offers minimal succor and fails to punish and correct the wealthy members who cause the poor misery.

While the events were a bit hokey like that of a rags to riches Alger story, Sinclair's identifying of many social ills are crystal clear. Fans of Sinclair will enjoy this book as well as those who are interested in social injustices and socialism.

I have a 1960 paperback. E-mail me if you'd be interested in it.

This is a good and interesting document. Tells a lot of raw truths about religion and it's profiteers. However, it claifies the differences between the reality of God and the concept of religion which has traditionally used to liberate a few and enslave the masses. Unfortunately, dated elements as rabid anti-Catholicism and pro-Bolshevism mar this message for modern readers, but if you can read this book with an open mind, it's quite revealing.

Muckraker and socialist writer, Upton Sinclair, takes on the subject of the corruption of formal religions in this vitriolic piece of non-fiction. Sinclair writes mainly about the crimes that organized Christian religions have committed against the common laborer and the strides they have taken to ingratiate themselves with big business.

Sinclair loads up a cart of rotten eggs and begins hurling them. He scores some major hits. He takes on the Anglican church and their faults as they drove the country of England into lack of preparedness for World War I. The Catholic church, which Sinclair argues is the worst of the bunch, gets 50 pages of scathing attacks--everything from where money came from to buy their churches and how they duped soldiers into world war I with seemingly holy prayer books. He also gives case examples on how they patched the wounds of the striking workers but failed to address the inequalities which causes the workers to strike. The protestant churches get their fair share as well with their crooked ministers who Rockefeller used to pacify his unruly and striking workers.

Organized religion, Sinclair points out, has also undermined women's rights, the right of poor worker to strike or find something better, and brought in a breed of charlatans (some of which have grown tremendously and still exist today). Sinclair also uses history to point out obvious abuses and shows how in some cases the writings of saints with socialistic ideas have been suppressed and not taught (or conveniently ignored).

Sinclair, at the end of the book, does not condemn Christianity. He believes that when the Social Revolution occurs that a new Christianity will take place that will encourage and make equal everyone's rights. Some of the facts and information are a bit dated, but over all the some of the same problems that existed at the turn of the century are still around. In addition, some of the ideas were a bit complicated and probably required more knowledge of what the issues were of the day than what I was familiar with. This book is a definite reminder of the effects of religious corruption and abuses.

Jimmie Higgins is the Forrest Gump of the "parlor pink" socialist propaganda put out by Upton Sinclair at the turn of the century. A down-on-his-luck, illiterate working stiff who gets caught up in the idealism of the socialist tide that had begun to well up in Europe and the United States in the early 1900s, Jimmie Higgins quickly gets caught up in a whirlwind of events that serve as a morality play for readers of the period. Jimmie meets Eugene Debbs, thinly disguised here as "The Candidate", the perennial plugger of the movement in America. He gets caught up in the party machinery, is hired by German "socialists" to blow up an ammunitions work only to find out that the men actually represented the Kaiser, joins the army to fight European imperialism, and finally ends up in Archangel in the Siberian Arctic to be introduced to Bolsheviks during the little known U.S. attempt to restore the czarists to power. The book is a thinly veiled work of propaganda and Upton Sinclair would never apologize for this. The novel was turned into a movie by the Soviets and was squashed by overwhelming anti-socialist sentiment here. For Upton Sinclair fanatics only. My copy was obtained from the University of Kentucky Press and has been out of print since the 1960s. Good luck in finding it.