Ranking alongside Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as a novel that has galvanized public opinion, Jungle tells the story of Jurgis Rudkus, a young immigrant who came to the New World to find a better life. 

Instead, he is confronted with the horrors of slaughterhouses, barbarous working conditions, crushing poverty, disease, and despair.

Upton Sinclair vividly depicted factory life in Chicago in the first years of the twentieth century, and the harrowing scenes he related aroused the indignation of the public and forced a government investigation.