In Part 1 of our discussion on Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, we welcome editor Kenneth W. Warren to discuss Sinclair's background, how his political commitments informed his literary endeavors, The Jungle's effect on regulatory efforts in the United States, and the techniques the novel uses to achieve its engrossing effect.

Kenneth W. Warren is Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literary Realism (1993), So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism (2003), and What Was African American Literature? (2011).

To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of The Jungle, go to https://seagull.wwnorton.com/TheJungleNL.

Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://seagull.wwnorton.com/nortonlibrary.

Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at nortonlibrary@wwnorton.com or find us on Twitter @TNL_WWN and Bluesky at @nortonlibrary.bsky.social.