Born 135 Years Ago Today - September 20, 1878
His muckraking novel The Jungle helped pass the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. In addition to writing dozens of other works of fiction, nonfiction and drama, Sinclair was directly political as well. He founded California's ACLU, ran as a socialist for the U.S. House (1920) and the U.S. Senate (1922), and - as a Democrat under the EPIC aegis - for governor of California (1934).
Sinclair's Wikipedia Page
Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair (Anthony Arthur, 2006)