King Coal (Heathen Edition) - Sinclair, Upton

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Biographie:
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (1878 - 1968) was an American writer who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair's work was well-known and popular in the first half of the twentieth century and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943. In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his classic muckraking novel The Jungle, which exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muckraking expos? of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the free press in the United States. Four years after publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created. Time magazine called him a man with every gift except humor and silence. He is also well remembered for the line: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. He used this line in speeches and the book about his campaign for governor as a way to explain why the editors and publishers of the major newspapers in California would not treat seriously his proposals for old age pensions and other progressive reforms. Upton Sinclair was considered a force of nature -- being not only prolific in his novel-writing but a political force of decided influence. Unknown to many of his admirers, Sinclair also wrote adventure fiction, under the name Ensign Clark Fitch, U.S.N.

Sommaire:
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968), a self-described socialist propagandist, was a prolific American author and trailblazing social crusader who sought to uncloak the wage slavery of workers by pioneering investigative journalism known as muckraking. His 1906 expos? The Jungle blew the whistle on deplorable sanitary and labor conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry, triggering a thunderous public outrage that contributed to the swift passage of both the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. Following the Ludlow Massacre - the seminal event of the 1913-1914 Colorado Coalfield War, and a strike identified as one of the most grueling, long-lasting industrial conflicts in the history of the United States - Sinclair focused his reformer attention on the coal mining industry with his 1917 novel King Coal, wherein the fuse ignites when Hal Warner relentlessly organizes a strike to help fellow coal miners unionize against a corrupt and exploitative coal baron, erupting in an explosive climax....