Journey to the Wilds of New York with The Jungle Book Club, Est. 1970

Maria Brito: Like many others, I'm sure that they noticed the absolute impossibility to get through this book because of the print format. Oh. My. Goodness. I am normally able to read books easily, no problemo. I couldn't get three pages in without having to take a break. Not only are the first few chapters extremely difficult to get through, the formatting makes it worse. It feels like I'm reading an academic textbook rather than a fiction novel. I noticed that it was an on-demand print, which I did not notice AT ALL when buying the book. When it arrived, I just noticed how abnormally huge it was. Genuinely like the size of a sheet of paper basically, if not a bit smaller. That coupled with the super small font and spacing made it seem like I was spending more time trying to comprehend what I was reading than actually enjoying the book. I haven't finished the book-nor do I plan to. From what I've gathered, it's really about the meat-packing industry and its terrible treatment of immigrant workers. While Sinclair aimed to bring awareness to the horrendous conditions that the workers were in, he instead brought attention to the disgusting treatment and condition of the meat that they were...

United States on Sep 01, 2023

Taylor Grimes: To start with, this is a book about the working conditions of the poor at the end of Guilded Age America. Our main character, Jurdis, arrives in America from Lithuania and makes the journey to Chicago where they found themselves in the heart of the meat packing industry. The slums were overcrowded, dirty, mortality rate is high, and it wasn't long before the Lithuanian immigrants started dropping like flies. Until only Jurdis Rudkus, Martha, and Elizebta remained.

The book's main theme resonates around how bad members of the lower class are living. All around them, the hierarchy is cheating them for every penny and hard labor. Party bosses pay off politicians and law enforcement, cheating and scamming those below them. While their goons do the dirty work. Jurdis went from meat packing worker, to farmer, to miner, to steel worker, and finally janitor. He had mingled with a lot of people who had either helped him or contributed to his ruin. Through it all he observes the hierarchy and the patterns that the upper class use over the lower, noting how each layer of the hierarchy is trying to cheat those below them. The whole system was rigged, and despite the efforts of...

United States on Mar 31, 2016

Dean T. Sinclair: This book is a conundrum. As noted by my title, the first two thirds is very good, and tells the story of Jurgis Rudkus and his family's ill-fated migration from Lithuania to America. They find their way to Chicago, and then several family members go through a series of highs and lows, finding work, losing work, gettting taken by unscrupulous bankers and lawyers, getting injured on the job, being forced into sexual relationships to keep jobs, etc. The early part of the book centers on Packingtown, and this part of the book is riveting and well written. After a series of incredible misfortunes, the main character, Jurgis, takes to the road and discovers a bit of America. This section of the book is also interesting, though sketchy. Clearly, Sinclair was beginning to either run out of gas or run out of interest in the story. In the last third of the book, Jurgis returns to Chicago and attends a socialist rally in which he gets converted to this economic doctrine. At that point, the story of Jurgis is largely abandoned, and the last 15% (on kindle) of the book is a series of speeches and monologues on the wonders of socialism. This section was for the most part unreadable, and this...

United States on Jan 14, 2013