Upton Sinclair

Broschiertes Buch

The Profits of Religion

Beschreibung

It is not too much to say that today no daily newspaper in any large American city dares to attack the emoluments of the Catholic Church, or to advocate restrictions upon the ecclesiastical machine. -from "Holy History" Few readers have not heard of Upton Sinclair's 1906 book The Jungle, his fictionalized account of Chicago's meatpacking industry, which set in motion dramatic social and governmental changes and highlighted the power of investigative journalism. But his 1918 book The Profits of Religion, a viciously witty censure of religious institutions in America, remains unjustly obscure. Drolly but bitterly subtitled "an essay in economic interpretation," this potent book condemns religious leaders for taking advantage of the credulity and hopefulness of ordinary Americans to line their own pockets and amass political influence. Not merely a brilliant work of persuasive journalism, this is also a document of the idealistic socialism that lingered after World War I, when the triumph of the movement's ideal still seemed possible. American writer UPTON SINCLAIR (1878-1968) was an active socialist and contributor to many socialist publications. His muckracking books include The Moneychangers (1908), King Coal (1917), Oil! (1927), and Boston (1928).

Autor

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 exposé 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.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cosimo Classics
• Seitenzahl: 320
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. November 2005
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 203mm x 127mm x 19mm
• Gewicht: 386g
• ISBN-13: 9781596055230
• ISBN-10: 1596055235
• Artikelnr.: 21386186