Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) was the most prolific novelist of social criticism in the USA of the 20th century. The essays of this volume (all of them papers submitted to an Upton Sinclair World Conference in Bremen, FRG, July 1988) deal with the historical backgrounds and the social reform movements which influenced (and were influenced by) Sinclair. Special emphasis is put on the dialectic of the interaction between literary techniques and the strategies of social reform.