So I'm going to read The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

[The Mikado]

It's a pain in the ass, and it has a weak ending (a very weak ending that feels like it was imported from another book entirely), but it's a powerful book.  The famous bits are the meat packing plant bits, but that's only the first third of the book.

Also, for all his positives, Upton Sinclair did not like black people, so don't be surprised to find some fairly racist passages in this book.

[The Mikado]

It's interesting to see how the public completely missed the point of the novel. Or at least didn't care.

"I aimed for America's heart and hit it in the stomach" or something.

The ending... what was that again? You mean the part with our Lithuanian immigrant (I forget his name ) as a Socialist agitator? Or was there something after that I've forgotten?

Coming a close second running for Mayor of Chicago, suddenly capable of discoursing on the finer parts of Socialist philosophy (there's a big argument in the end over whether or not Socialism is compatible with Christianity, and our uneducated and mostly-unlettered hero suddenly starts learnedly discussing the issue), etc.