This is a great book that follows a Lithuanian in the early part of the twentieth century. The situation of poor production, working condition, and the lack of proper living conditions are the major focus points. An explanation of the bribing and overall detrimental negotiating environment is vividly given. The theme of the book is a socialist account of what is happening to the people. This is where the author goes wrong. If someone is bribing, in a capitalist system, nobody will trade with them anymore. There is a severe cost of dishonesty. Only in a socialist system is there no cost to discrimination. The author does a very good job with at times reminding the reader what had happened before in a succinct way. The best part of the book which makes it great, is that the author does not keep to a linear story line, meaning that the main character goes from doing bad to worse than to better than to worse to best to bad and so on. The fluctuations in the story make this book very believable. There is a slight difficulty in reading the book initially as many people and their respective backgrounds are given in a short few pages that it makes it difficult to keep track of who is who. ( )

This book has forever changed how I feel about immigrants and how they were treated.

I remember hearing about this book in my high school Literary Criticism competition studies (I always got Upton Sinclair and Sinclair Lewis). I knew he'd written about poor conditions in meat packing plants, but I didn't realize that the book was a novel with a plot. Frankly, it was pretty depressing. Listening to descriptions of the lives of the characters, often barely scraping by and nearly starving, made me feel incredibly privileged to be in my current position, having quit a job of my own volition and being able to comfortably spent 4 months looking for one I like better. ( )

Disturbing! ( )

Rarely is a book truly too good to put down. I must just love reading about misery, because this book really did it for me. I found myself hoping the characters would just die to escape the miseries of life--as though that would be their triumph over those who oppressed and exploited them. If only it had not puttered out at the end. I almost thought Sinclair was indulging in a bit of self-targeting satire with regards to his beloved Socialism by the way he presented it as (practically) a religion, but I think he was in earnest. I wonder if they make kids read this in school. Probably not--too dangerous to make them see too much behind the curtain. ( )