Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | World’s End | 1940 | Upton Sinclair | Buy |
| 2 | Between Two Worlds | 1941 | Upton Sinclair | Buy |
| 3 | Entre dos mundos | 1941 | Upton Sinclair | N/A |
| 4 | Dragon’s Teeth I | 1942 | Upton Sinclair | Buy |
| 5 | Wide is the Gate | 1943 | Upton Sinclair | Buy |
| 6 | Presidential Agent | 1944 | Upton Sinclair | Buy |
| 7 | Dragon Harvest | 1945 | Upton Sinclair | Buy |
| 8 | A World to Win | 1946 | Upton Sinclair | Buy |
| 9 | Presidential Mission | 1947 | Upton Sinclair | Buy |
| 10 | One Clear Call | 1948 | Upton Sinclair | Buy |
| 11 | O Shepherd, Speak! | 1949 | Upton Sinclair | Buy |
| 12 | The Return of Lanny Budd | 1953 | Upton Sinclair | Buy |
The Lanny Budd series is Upton Sinclair’s most ambitious project, spanning twelve novels published between 1940 and 1953. The books follow Lanny Budd, the illegitimate son of an American arms manufacturer, from the years before World War I through the early Cold War. Lanny moves through European high society as an art dealer, which gives him access to heads of state, military leaders, and political figures on all sides. In later volumes he becomes a secret agent working directly for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, using his cover as a dealer in fine paintings to gather intelligence inside Nazi Germany.
The series works as both a sprawling adventure story and a fictionalized tour of twentieth-century history. World’s End opens with the buildup to the First World War, Between Two Worlds covers the Jazz Age and the 1929 crash, and Dragon’s Teeth follows the Nazi seizure of power. Later books deal with the Spanish Civil War, the fall of France, D-Day, and the atomic bomb. The Return of Lanny Budd, the final volume, takes on the early Cold War and the threat of Soviet expansion. Throughout the series, Lanny interacts with real historical figures including Hitler, Goering, and Roosevelt.
Sinclair wrote the novels at a fast clip during the 1940s, and they were bestsellers in their time. Dragon’s Teeth won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the only Pulitzer Sinclair received despite his long career. The series has fallen out of wide readership since then, but it remains one of the most detailed fictional accounts of the first half of the twentieth century.