Upton Sinclair

California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual

By Lauren Coodley

2013

First Published

4.00

Average Rating

256

Number of Pages

7H49M

Audio Length

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 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.

Avg Rating

4.00

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

36%

4 STARS

38%

3 STARS

19%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Lauren Coodley

Author · 2 books

Lauren Coodley began her career tutoring students for the GED and teaching night school psychology at the local junior college. She attained tenure the same year her son Nils was born; before that, she worked at least two jobs while raising her daughter Caitlin. She invented and taught classes ranging from overcoming math anxiety to children’s literature. In l996, she received a second M.A. from Sonoma State University, this time in history. She also received two grants from the California Council for the Humanities and from the Lilly Library to further her research on Upton Sinclair. The Land of Orange Groves and Jails: Upton Sinclair's California, which she edited, was published as part of the California Legacy series by Santa Clara University and Heyday Books. Napa: the Transformation of an American Town (Arcadia Publishing) is based on archival photographs and original interviews. She revised the book in 2007 with Paula Amen Schmitt. California: a Multicultural History in Documents was published by Prentice-Hall in 2008. If Not to History: Recovering the Stories of Napa’s Women essays by lauren and poems by paula amen Schmitt, was published by the Napa County Historical Society in 2009. Napa Farming History was published by Arcadia Publishing in 20ll, co-written with Paula Amen Judah. Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual was published by University of Nebraska Press, 2013 Napa Valley Chronicles was published by The History Press, 2013.