1906 best-seller shockingly reveals intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards as it tells the brutally grim story of a Slavic family that emigrates to America full of optimism but soon descends into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and despair. A fiercely realistic American classic that will haunt readers long after they've finished the last page. Published privately by Sinclair in 1906 after commercial publishers rejected the manuscript, The Jungle was a shocking revelation of harmful labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards. It quickly became a best-seller, arousing public sentiment and resulting in such Federal legislation as the Pure Food and Drug Act.