Upton Sinclair Non-Fiction books in order

Reading order

Upton Sinclair’s non-fiction output was as large and varied as his fiction. He began his “Dead Hand” series of institutional critiques with The Profits of Religion (1918), which examined how organized churches supported economic inequality. The Brass Check (1919) attacked the American press for serving corporate interests instead of the public. The Goose Step (1923) and The Goslings (1924) turned the same critical eye on universities and public schools, arguing that both were controlled by the same wealthy donors and trustees who ran industry.

A large portion of Sinclair’s non-fiction comes from his 1934 run for governor of California under the End Poverty in California (EPIC) banner. He wrote I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty (1933) as a campaign pamphlet imagining his own victory, then followed it with The Epic Plan for California, Immediate EPIC, and I, Candidate for Governor, which described how Hollywood studios and big business defeated him through an early example of modern attack-ad campaigning. These political books are read today more as historical documents than as policy proposals.

Among the more unusual titles is Mental Radio (1930), in which Sinclair described experiments in telepathy conducted with his second wife, Mary Craig Sinclair. Albert Einstein wrote the preface to the German edition. Sinclair also wrote memoirs (American Outpost, The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair), religious studies (A Personal Jesus, The Secret Life of Jesus), and dozens of shorter pamphlets and open letters on subjects from fasting to the Spanish Civil War. Taken together, the non-fiction forms a running diary of one man’s attempt to change American society through the written word.