[Obituaries asked us] to remember "Uppie" for three achievements: (1) the Federal interest in food inspection stimulated by his 1906 work The Jungle; (2) his EPIC (End Poverty in California) program of the early Depression years; and (3) the anti-Nazi novel, Dragon's Teeth (1942), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. It was recalled also that for a generation Sinclair was one of the most feared and vilified homegrown Victorian Socialists in modern history. (p. 173)

Generally overlooked has been Sinclair's running battle with Hollywood, which reached its peak in the 1930's. No other private citizen outside movie circles has provoked the film colony into such a frenzy…. All his adult life Sinclair was trying to tell America something: That social injustice could be redressed only by public faith in, and a total realization of, the concept of economic equality. Such a message is more palatable today. Between the two World Wars it reeked...