Rarely has a novel so completely captured America at a crossroads as has Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. It follows Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus and his family through an epic journey from their impoverished homeland to America and the promised land of the Chicago stockyards. The promise of freedom and prosperity soon fades though as Jurgis and his family are trapped in a cycle of grinding poverty, sickness, and brutal working conditions.

Though beautifully written, the tone of the story is oppressive — but that's pretty much the point. Jurgis is transformed from a proud, hard-working man to a broken, used-up shell. The stockyard factories take everything a worker has and then tosses them aside. Interspersed throughout the main storyline we also find whole chapters cataloging corruption and the horrific working conditions of the time; other chapters detail the gruesome and grossly unsanitary practices of the meat industry. The Jungle did lead to many important reforms in food safety laws and even eventually to the creation of the FDA. Sinclair had hoped his novel would serve as a call for labor reform and towards the end it does become a bit of a love letter to socialism. The Jungle did however highlight very real labor problems and Chicago would become a center for union activity and labor reform.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with Casey Affleck as narrator, yet he quickly won me over. He brings a very necessary everyman feel to the story, a much-needed human touch to the material that often takes you to very inhuman places. His reading of one of the pivotal scenes where a childbirth goes horribly wrong is one of the most utterly devastating, yet touching performances you will ever hear. Affleck brings an incredible depth and understanding as well as a welcome subtlety to much of the reading. In lesser hands this material could have been easily overplayed and maudlin. Affleck's buy-in and commitment to the characters and story are palpable.

Sometimes it's important to revisit our own history, and many of the issues addressed in The Jungle are important and fiercely debated topics again today. Lest we forget our past, The Jungle is here to remind us of a rather dark part of our history and some of the flaws and weaknesses in our own humanity. —Cleo Creech