There are two general approaches which Sinclair makes in [his] novels. One is a close, documented study of the working of some specific economic mechanism; the other is a charge of general conspiracy for the maintenance and extension of privilege on the part of the beneficiaries of the system. The Jungle is relatively successful because it leans heavily on the former technique, though the charge of conspiracy is implicit throughout. The later novels are much more flabby and give the reader a sickening sense of the injustices of the economic system only when they fall back on the straight reportorial method.

Most ambitious of Sinclair's social chronicles is the monster work which occupied him throughout the 1940's, the so-called Lanny Budd series. There are eleven volumes in this series…. (Actually the publication of the tenth in 1949 rounded out the series in its original conception. The Return of Lanny...