BOOKS
June 18, 2006 | Richard Rayner, Richard Rayner is the author of several books, most recently "The Devil's Wind," a novel.
UPTON SINCLAIR lived a life of almost cartoonish excitements. He was born in Baltimore in 1878, the frail son of parents whose wealth was fading. In 1888, the family headed to New York and, as Anthony Arthur relates in his fine new biography, "Radical Innocent," the Sinclairs lived hand to mouth, "sliding steadily downwards through a series of boarding houses that catered to displaced southerners like themselves."
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 15, 2006
May 15, 1923: Upton Sinclair, a crusading writer, climbed the steps of a platform that striking dockworkers had built atop what they named Liberty Hill in San Pedro. As someone held a candle for illumination, Sinclair began reading the Bill of Rights, making no reference to the 600 dockworkers who had recently been arrested for striking. Sinclair only got as far as the first three lines of the 1st Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, before he was arrested.
BOOKS
February 26, 2006 | Rich Cohen, Rich Cohen is the author of "Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams" and "The Record Men: The Chess Brothers and the Birth of Rock & Roll." His new book, "Sweet and Low: A Family Story," will be published in April.
ANY face, viewed too closely, will appear as unreal as a face in a dream. In his second novel, "U.S.!," Chris Bachelder looks too long in the face of Upton Sinclair, the great muckraking socialist of the American past and author of 87 books, including "The Jungle," a seminal work that took readers inside the Chicago slaughterhouses. The real Sinclair died in 1968, mostly forgotten but still fighting. In "U.S.!
BOOKS
February 26, 2006 | Anthony Arthur, Adapted from the afterword by Anthony Arthur to "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. Afterword Copyright 2006 by Anthony Arthur. Published by arrangement with Modern Library, an imprint of Random House. Anthony Arthur's biography, "Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair," will be published by Random House in June.
IN May 1903, the ambitious 24-year-old novelist Upton Sinclair feared that he was a failure, "a would-be singer and penniless rat." Less than three years later, almost immediately after the publication of "The Jungle" on Feb. 26, 1906, his renown was so widespread that the New York Evening World marveled: "Not since Byron awoke one morning to find himself famous has there been such an example of world-wide celebrity won in a day by a book as has come to Upton Sinclair."
OPINION
December 30, 2005
Re "Sinclair Letter Turns Out to Be Another Expose," Dec. 24 History has shown that Richard Nixon was correct about Alger Hiss, and, with the fall of the Soviet Union, that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were, in fact, atomic spies. Now Upton Sinclair knew that he fabricated the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti. They were, in fact, cold-blooded killers. It seems that the left is easily deceived. JERRY ANDERSEN Pacific Palisades
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 24, 2005 | Jean O. Pasco, Times Staff Writer
Ordinarily, Paul Hegness wouldn't have looked twice at Lot 217 as he strolled through an Irvine auction warehouse, preferring first-edition books and artwork to the box stuffed with old papers and holiday cards. But then, he wouldn't have stumbled upon a confession from one of America's great authors. Inside the box, an envelope postmarked Sept. 12, 1929, caught his eye. It was addressed to John Beardsley, Esq., of Los Angeles. The return address read, "Upton Sinclair, Long Beach."