The Jungle

Upton Sinclair's blistering novel of labor, greed, and industrial Chicago returns in an illustrated Maudlin Classics edition.

The Jungle follows Jurgis Rudkus and his family as they come to Chicago looking for a better life and end up trapped in the brutal world of the Union Stockyards. What they find is dangerous work, poverty, corruption, and a system that treats people as disposable.

Published in 1906, The Jungle became a national sensation and helped spur passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. More than a century later, it has lost none of its bite. Sinclair's Chicago is filthy, funny, horrifying, furious, and startlingly recognizable, a world where everything has a price and somebody else is always paying it.

For this edition, Chicago artist Dmitry Samarov brings Sinclair's world back into view through original ballpoint illustrations of workers, weddings, saloons, slaughterhouses, factory gates, and the sprawling industrial landscape of Packingtown.

Bill Savage, who has taught The Jungle for more than thirty years, looks at the novel from the other side of a century of Chicago history. The stockyards are gone and the industrial landscape has changed, but the questions Sinclair was asking about labor, wealth, exploitation, and who pays the price of progress haven't gone anywhere.

Sinclair aimed for the heart. This edition hits the eyes.