The Lanny Budd Novels Volume One: World's End, Between Two Worlds, and Dragon's Teeth

Lanny Budd #1-3

by Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair’s Pulitzer Prize–winning series of historical novels brings the first half of the twentieth century dramatically to life.

In World’s End , the gathering storm clouds of World War I burst over Europe, forcing Lanning “Lanny” Budd, the young son of an American arms dealer, to put the innocence of youth behind him; his language skills and talent for decoding messages are in high demand. At his father’s side, Lanny meets many important political and military figures, learns about the myriad causes of the conflict, and closely follows the war’s progress. When the bloody hostilities conclude, Lanny joins the Paris Peace Conference as the assistant to a geographer asked by President Woodrow Wilson to redraw the map of Europe.
 
From the rise of Fascism in Europe to the stock market crash on Wall Street, Between Two Worlds captures the drama, intrigue, and excitement of the Roaring Twenties. At the start of his career as an international art dealer, Lanny travels to Italy and witnesses the brutal charisma of Benito Mussolini. Meanwhile, in Germany, the failed Beer Hall Putsch led by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party strikes an ominous note, foreshadowing the devastation to come. After two star-crossed love affairs, Lanny marries a wealthy heiress and chooses the United States with its booming economy as their home. But neither he nor those he loves can predict the financial disaster that will bring a decade of prosperity to an abrupt close.
 
Winner of the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Dragon’s Teeth brilliantly captures the nightmarish march toward the Second World War. In Germany to visit relatives, Lanny encounters a disturbing atmosphere of hatred and jingoism stoked by the Nazi Party and meets the group’s fanatical leader, Adolf Hitler. But Lanny’s gravest fear is the threat to his Jewish friends and family—a threat that impels him to risk his wealth, his future, and even his life in a courageous attempt to rescue his loved ones from a terrible fate.
 
An astonishing mix of history, adventure, and romance, the Lanny Budd Novels are a testament to the breathtaking scope of Upton Sinclair’s vision and his singular talents as a storyteller.
 

Genres: Historical Fiction, Historical, Classics, Fiction

2210 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 28, 2016

About the author

Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle (1906). To gather information for the novel, Sinclair spent seven weeks undercover working in the meat packing plants of Chicago. These direct experiences exposed the horrific conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. The Jungle has remained continuously in print since its initial publication. In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the “free press” in the United States. Four years after the initial publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created. Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence." In 1943, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Sinclair also ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Socialist, and was the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of California in 1934, though his highly progressive campaign was defeated.

Reviews

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The World's End series, eleven books that span history of the era from the WWI to the cold war, with its stage expanding from Europe to cover much of the globe, begins with World's End; the ominous title notwithstanding, the book begins steeped in the leisurely beauty of Europe that had no clue it was perilously at edge of an era it was going to be thrown headlong into, with wars, revolutions, massacres and genocides forming only a few of the horrors, millions losing lives and more. Think the opening scene of the first episode of Downton Abbey - not literally of course, but in spirit. Europe, most of it anyway, was at peace in 1913 and the author describes it so superbly, reading it for only the second time one is enchanted all over again.

The first time was over four decades ago, just after finishing a second degree at another university and finishing reading plays of George Bernard Shaw, and looking forward to another beginning again, a beginning of a serious career choice. Perfect time to immerse oneself in this, then a serendipitous find in - the now heritage - David Sasson Library where we were life members. At that young age, it was the perfect time indeed to get to know the world and the recent history, through the eyes and writing of this author who presented truths and horrors without putting beauty and love aside, and was real without cynicism. Reading it again, about the young teen who is looking forward to much, to everything, of life and world, one has the author say at the end of second chapter:-

"What was the use of thinking about religion and self-dedication and all that, if men were shrimps and crabs, and nations were sharks and octopi? Here was a problem which men had been debating before Lanny Budd was born and which it would take him some time to settle!"

And despite knowing the whole series, the beauty of writing of this author has one almost wonder if one ought to hold oneself back from indulging in the pleasure!
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Having meanwhile read several, but not finished yet the most famous, works of William Shirer, its all the more evident there is a deep connection between the two writers of seemingly very different genre - Upton Sinclair's prose borders on poetry in all but rhyme, and William Shirer seems to act and think so very like Lanny Budd the protagonist of this series as he writes about the same era, that one has to wonder, did they ever meet? Perhaps not, and perhaps it's a deeper connection of spirit that needs no meeting of persons in physical terms, or even of them having any correspondence.
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One of the delights of this series is that while the characters in front stage, so to speak, mostly are recognisable prototypes, and some of them at centre ideals, famous names of the era are woven into the story via encounters and relationships with those in forefront, and these are from most areas of life, from politics of every sort to artists, businessmen and society, literature and more. Early on Lanny meets Barbara Pugliese, and it's a very moving description, of the woman who chose to live amonst poor and is emaciated. Later in this volume, after WWI as Lanny is a secretsry at the peace conference, Lanny meets Lawrence with Emir Feudal, and a page by the author sums up Lawrence of Arabia. Later volumes of course have almost everyone worth naming!
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Lanny being told about British treaty with France denied in British parliament:-

"“That has been denied in the British Parliament,” Robbie declared, “but the British diplomat’s definition of a lie is an untrue statement made to a person who has a right to know the truth. Needless to say, there aren’t many such persons!”

Later, after Lanny has discovered East End and the dire poverty in Berkshire for tenants, he's talking to Robbie, who finds British poverty disgusting.

"Robbie had been in business competition with the English, which was different from being a guest in their well-conducted homes. “They are sharp traders,” he said, “and that’s all right, but what gets your goat is the mask of righteousness they put on; nobody else sells armaments for the love of Jesus Christ.” The Empire, he added, was run by a little group of insiders in “the City”—the financial district. “There are no harder-fisted traders anywhere; power for themselves is what they are out for, and they’ll destroy the rest of the world to get and keep it.”"

"In our country when the political bosses want to fill their campaign chest, they put up some rich man for a high office—a ‘fat cat’ they call him—and he pays the bills and gets elected for a term of years. In England the man pays a much bigger sum into the party campaign chest, and he’s made a marquess or a lord, and he and his descendants will govern the Empire forever after—but that isn’t corruption, that’s ‘nobility’!” ... On the board of Vickers are four marquesses and dukes, twenty knights, and fifty viscounts and barons. The Empire will do exactly what they say—and there won’t be any ‘graft’ involved.”"

Europe on brink of WWI, they meet a French journalist in Paris.

"“The German ambassador pleaded with friends of mine at the Quai d’Orsay. ‘There is and should be no need for two highly civilized nations to engage in strife. Russia is a barbarous state, a Tatar empire, essentially Asiatic.’ So they argue. They would prefer to devour us at a second meal,” added the Frenchman, his black eyes shining."

The author uses a neat device, in setting the not entirely historical characters representing characteristics national and political, and Lanny has an upper class British nobility friend and a German one whose father is comptroller in castle Stubendorf in Silesia.

"Rick hadn’t been as much impressed by Kurt’s long words as had Lanny, and he said that anyhow, what was the use of fancy-sounding philosophy if you didn’t make it count in everyday affairs? Rick said furthermore that from now on America’s safety depended on the British fleet, and the quicker the Americans realized it the better for them and for the world."

The description is an apt and succinct for most of WWI:-

"Winter was coming now. In Flanders and through northern France a million men were lying out in the open, in trenches and shell holes half full of filthy water which froze at night. They were devoured by vermin and half paralyzed by cold, eating bread and canned meat, when it could be brought to them over roads which had been turned into quagmires. All day and night bullets whistled above them and shells came down out of the sky, blowing bodies to fragments and burying others under loads of mud. The wounded had to lie where they fell until death released them, or night made it possible for their fellows to drag them back into the trenches."

"The military deadlock at the front continued. All winter long the Allies had spent their forces trying to take trenches defended by machine guns—a weapon of which the Germans had managed to get the biggest supply. It was something that Robbie Budd had helped to teach them—and which he had tried in vain to teach the French and British. He couldn’t write freely about it now, but there were hints in his letters, and Lanny knew what they meant, having been so often entertained by his father’s comic portrayals of the British War Office officials with whom he had been trying to do business. So haughty they were, so ineffable, almost godlike in their self-satisfaction—and so dumb! No vulgar American could tell them anything; and now dapper young officers strolled out in front of their troops, waving their swagger sticks, and the German sharpshooters knocked them over like partridges off tree limbs. It was sublime, but it wasn’t going to win this war of machines."

Something not often publicised:-

"The British had failed in their efforts to take the Dardanelles, largely because they couldn’t decide whether the taking was worth the cost. Now they were starting an advance from Salonika, a harbor in the north of Greece. That country had a pro-German king, ..."

The then King of Greece was a brother of Queen Alexandra of England and her sister Dagmar the mother of Tsar Nicholas. What's more, his son Prince Andrew was married to Princess Alice of Hesse, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and his grandson Prince Philip is the Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II of England. While England and Russia had closer ties with German royals and Kaiser Wilhelm was a grandson of Queen Victoria, the then king of Greece did not, not anywhere near his ties with England and Russia. Which makes his siding with Germany very curious.

Lanny reads Greek literature to Marcel, his new stepfather the painter and wounded soldier.

"For what had this gay and eager people been brought into being on those bright and sunny shores, to leave behind them only broken marble columns, and a few thousand melodious verses embodying proud resignation and despair?

"As a result of these influences, encountered at the most impressionable age, Lanny Budd became conservative in his taste in the arts. He liked a writer to have something to say, and to say it with clarity and precision; he liked a musician to reveal his ideas in music, and not in program notes; he liked a painter to produce works that bore some resemblance to something. He disliked loud noises and confusion, and obscurity cultivated as a form of exclusiveness. All of which meant that Lanny was out-of-date before he had got fairly started in life."

Robbie instructs his son to stay neutral despite living in Europe, and it's difficult for Lanny after two years of war.

"“Germany is trying to break her way to the east, mainly to get oil, the first necessity of modern machine industry. There is oil in Rumania and the Caucasus, and more in Mesopotamia and Persia. Look up these places on the map, so as to know what I’m telling you. England, Russia, and France all have a share, while Germany has none. That’s what all the shooting is about; and I am begging you to paste this up on your looking glass, or some place where you will see it every day. It’s an oil man’s war, and they are all patriotic, because if they lose the war they’ll lose the oil. But the steel men and the coal men have worked out international cartels, so they don’t have to be patriotic. They have ways of communicating across no man’s land, and they do. I’m a steel man, and they talk to me, and so I get news that will never be printed.”"

"The military men were allowed to destroy whatever else they pleased, but nothing belonging to Krupp and Thyssen and Stinnes, the German munitions kings who had French connections and investments, or anything belonging to Schneider and the de Wendels, masters of the Comité des Forges, who had German connections and investments."

"“I could tell you a hundred different facts which I know, and which all fit into one pattern. The great source of steel for both France and Germany is in Lorraine, called the Briey basin; get your map and look it up, and you will see that the battle line runs right through it. On one side the Germans are getting twenty or thirty million tons of ore every year and smelting it into steel, and on the other side the French are doing the same. On the French side the profits are going to François de Wendel, President of the Comité des Forges and member of the Chamber of Deputies; on the other side they are going to his brother Charles Wendel, naturalized German subject and member of the Reichstag. Those huge blast furnaces and smelters are in plain sight; but no aviators even tried to bomb them until recently. Then one single attempt was made, and the lieutenant who had charge of it was an employee of the Comité des Forges. Surprisingly, the attempt was a failure.”

"... the same thing was happening to the four or five million tons of iron ore which Germany was getting from Sweden; the Danish line which brought this ore to Germany had never lost a vessel, in that service or any other, and the Swedish railroads which carried the ore burned British coal. “If it hadn’t been for this,” wrote the father, “Germany would have been out of the war a year ago. It’s not too much to say that every man who died at Verdun, and everyone who has died since then, has been a sacrifice to those businessmen who own the newspapers and the politicians of France.""

"England would follow her usual rule of losing every battle but the last."

Lanny went to Connecticut to live with his father's family as U.S. joined WWI finally, and there were large number of Budd relatives.

"Most of those who were not preaching the Word were employed by Budd Gunmakers Corporation in one capacity or another, and just now were working at the task of making the days of the Germans as short as possible. The Germans had their own God, who was working just as hard for his side—so Lanny read in a German magazine which the kind Mr. Robin took the trouble to send him. How these Gods adjusted matters up in their heaven was a problem which was too much for Lanny, so he put his mind on the dates of ancient Greek and Roman wars."
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A continuously recurring pleasure in reading this series is various references of literature, history, and quotes. One that forms a title of book three of World's End and thereafter recurs at key points is "Bela Gerant Alii", which means "let others make war", and the first chapter heading is "Loved I Not Honour More". Another, in a chapter heading "Pierian Spring", about Lanny's education, is reference to verses by Alexander Pope:-

"A little learning is a dangerous thing
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring."
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About the war, now that U.S. had entered:-

"The airplanes were going to be driven by “liberty motors,” and you ate “liberty steak” and “liberty cabbage” instead of hamburgers and sauerkraut. Robbie hated such nonsense; he hated still more to see the country and its resources being used for what he said were the purposes of British imperialism. ... when Robbie would remark that the British ruling classes were the shrewdest propagandists in the world, a sudden chill would fall at the breakfast table."

About the Budd clan:-

"These odd people had a way of quarreling bitterly and never making up. Uncle Andrew Budd and his wife had lived in the same house for thirty years and never spoken. Cousin Timothy and Cousin Rufus couldn’t agree upon the division of their family farm, so they had cut it in halves and lived as neighbors, but did not visit. Aunt Agatha, Robbie’s eldest sister, went off and took up residence in a hotel, and forbade the clerk at the desk ever to announce any person by the name of Budd. That was New England, Robbie said; a sort of ingrown place, self-centered, opinionated, proud."

Lanny met his great-great-uncle Eli Budd, head of the clan, being the only surviving uncle of grandfather Samuel Budd.

"Between these two there took place that chemical process of the soul whereby two become one, not gradually, but all at once. They had lived three thousand miles apart, yet they had developed this affinity. The seventeen-year-old one told his difficulties and his problems, and the eighty-three-year-old one renewed his youth, and spoke words which seemed a sort of divination. Said he:

"“Do not let other people invade your personality. Remember that every human being is a unique phenomenon, and worth developing. You will meet many who have no resources of their own, and who will try to fasten themselves upon you. You will find others eager to tell you what to do and think and be. But it is better to go apart and learn to be yourself.”

"Great-Great-Uncle Eli was a “transcendentalist,” having known many of the old New England group. There is something in us all, he said, that is greater than ourselves, that works through us and can be used in the making of character. The central core of life is personality. To respect the personality of others is the beginning of virtue, and to enforce respect for it is the first duty of the individual toward all forms of government, all organizations and systems which men contrive to enslave and limit their fellows."

"Lanny told about his mother, and about Marcel; about Rick and his family, and about Kurt; he even told about Rosemary, and the old clergyman was not shocked; he said that customs in sexual matters varied in different parts of the world, and what suited some did not suit others. “The blood of youth is hot,” he said, “and impatience sets traps for us, and prepares regrets that sometimes last all our lives. The important thing is not to wrong any woman—and that is no easy matter, for women are great demanders, and do not scruple to invade the personality.” Great-Great-Uncle Eli smiled, but Lanny knew he was serious."

Lanny gets a letter from Kurt, posted in N.Y.:-

"This led to the main purpose of the letter, which was to plead with Lanny to resist the subtle wiles of the British propaganda machine. Kurt wasn’t afraid that his friend might get physically hurt, for it was obvious that the British would be driven into the sea and the French would lose Paris long before the Americans could take any effective part in this war. But Kurt didn’t want his friend’s mind distorted and warped by the agents of British imperialism. These people, who had grabbed most of the desirable parts of the earth, now thought they had a chance to destroy the German fleet, build their Cape-to-Cairo railroad, keep the Germans from building the Berlin-to-Bagdad railroad, and in every way thwart the efforts of a vigorous and capable race to find their place in the sun.

"It was to be expected that France would hate Germany and make war upon her, because the French were a jealous people, and thought of Germans as their hereditary enemies; they were pursuing their futile dream of getting Alsace-Lorraine with its treasures of coal and iron. But Englishmen were blood kinsmen to the Germans, and their war upon Germany was fratricide; the crime of using black and brown and yellow troops to destroy the highest culture in Europe would outlaw its perpetrators forever. Now the desperate British militarists were spending their wealth circulating a mass of lies about Germany’s war methods and war aims; what a tragedy that Americans, a free people, with three thousand miles of ocean between them and Europe’s quarrels, had swallowed all this propaganda, and were wasting their money and their labor helping Britain to grab more territory and harness more peoples to her imperial chariot!"

Author mentions an English play that Gracyn Phillipson is getting a chance to do, and the storyline is far too like that of Casablanca. Also it's a bit like one by Jarasandha, made into a film by Bimal Roy. Another play named "The Colonel’s Lady" has title suggesting similar story to a superb Navketan film.

Summary by author of end of war:-

"The Allied armies continued their grinding advance. The Hindenburg line was cracked and the Germans forced to retreat. First Bulgaria collapsed, then Turkey, then Austria; there came a revolution in Germany and the Kaiser fled to Holland ..."

And summing up father and son:-

"“You’ll be a foreigner, Lanny.”

"“I’ll be a citizen of several countries. The world will need some like that.”"

And about Gracyn:-

"“Or else—note this: that if you’d had thirty thousand dollars, you might have licked the coffee merchant!”

"They were in the taxi on the way to the steamer; and Lanny grinned. “There’s an English poem supposed to be sung by the devil, and the chorus runs: ‘How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho, how pleasant it is to have money!’”"

[Marieke Izelaar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Echt fantastisch. Zeker als je het boek in de context van schrijven plaatst. De triologie is geschreven temidden van de eerste jaren van WOII en met een vooruitzicht waar je u tegen zegt.

[L S Hardy · Rating 5 out of 5]

To understand the World Wars , read this series

The first three books, found in this volume, cover the years between the beginning of World War I and the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany. Looking back, one wonders, just as the hero of the series does, how the people of Germany and all the World allowed such events to happen. These books show how prevailing attitudes and self interests among the different counties led to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini and the rest of the series will carry the reader on to World War II and into the Cold War. If you are one of those people interested in just how these historic events unfolded, read this series.

[Frances McNamara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm working on a book set in 1918 so I wanted to read someone who was around at that time. I have read The Jungle and Boston by Upton Sinclair. The style is can be a bit heavy and Boston is way too long, yet fascinating since it's about the Sacco Vanzetti case, and Sinclair participated in some of the protests. The Lanny Budd novels are about a young man who grows up in Europe, but I thought they were interesting as a portrayal of that time period. Portrayal of the growth of fascism in Italy and German in the second half of these books was chilling.

[joani frankel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through a reverse looking glass

Like Alice in her topsy turvy world I too am in a topsy turvy world comparable to the fascist rise and unmitigated cruelty and tyranny as I see dictators and want to be dictators live out the themes that Sinclair so vividly tells us about. From stunning lives of the "cafe society" in the early 1900s to the horrific take over of Germany Sinclair tells us what we don't want to but have to know as history repeats itself. On yo.books 4-6 I go because I have to.

[Martin Denton]

I really want to get back to reading this. I got about halfway through "World's End," the first of the three books included in this edition (I think there are about nine volumes all together). Sinclair's writing is excellent and the portrait of the USA at the dawn of World War I is riveting and involving. The book kept me company in various waiting rooms for many weeks; but it's too layered and thought-provoking to be good bedtime reading, and so it got cast aside in favor of lighter fare.

[Kenn Stacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting view of History through a contemporary voice.

Mostly captivating but a bit preachy at times. I am still interested in the characters for the time being.🤞 thanks.

[Lloyd Mullins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant stuff. Lanny is a great protagonist. Definitely an interesting look at the arms industry, and how it affects the world, and a great novel on top of that!

[Tom Cowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This rating is only for the first book in the series, World’s End.

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series is like a history lesson with wit, charme and thoroughly lovable -and some hateable- characters. Europe between 1914 and the end of the stories in the 40s comes vividly alive with an abundance of historical facts, personages and experiences. Hard to put down if you like history, well written fiction and humor even among the chaos.

[Richard Potts]

If you want to see that much of our history as well as present continue to repeat, start reading these novels. Amazing!