Dragon's Teeth II

Dragon's Teeth #2

by Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair Simon Publications 01/20/2001 324Binding Paperback 1.03lbs 9.06h x 6.06w x 0.76d 9781931313155This title is not returnable

Genres: Historical Fiction

2 pages, Paperback

Published January 20, 2001

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

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book (the entire 631 pages of Parts I & II). It is slow-going at first (Part I), but it really picks up in Part II (this book), and is well-worth sticking with it until it does. And once it does, WOW! You just can't put it down. What I think is masterful about this book is that Sinclair manages to describe the horrors of the Nazi rise to, and brutal exercise of, power. The evil and lunacy of men like Goebbels, Goring, Hitler, etc., is not only presented in an unvarnished way, but also with a real sense of disgust and contempt - yet also, amazingly, still finding a way to avoid caricaturizing this brutality and even generating some nuanced picture of a below-the-surface humanity in Nazi Germany in the midst of all this madness through characters like Hugo Behr and Kurt Meissner. Irma was a disappointment in the end, but I think she represented in Sinclair's estimation the reprehensible attitude among many Americans of the day of utter disinterest, or even disbelief, of what was happening in Hitler's Germany in the early years of the Third Reich. Amazing that Sinclair wrote this in 1941/42 and was able to publish this in real time as such a complete indictment of the world's failure to address the atrocities they were becoming aware of. Well deserving of the Pulitzer, in my opinion.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simon Publications had to re-release Dragon Harvest in two parts, due to technological limitations. It does make for a nice, portable trade paperback-sized edition.

Here is more on the period ranging from the annexation of Czechoslovakia to the fall of France. The portrayal of the evacuation of Dunkirk is particularly moving - of course, our intrepid hero Lanny Budd was there...and...I won't spoil it.

I'm pleased to see these back in print. There's romance, war, intrigue, paranormal stuff (so unfashionable today), philosophy, art...Sinclair's political observations are remarkable. These books have got me thinking about "appeasement". Our public discourse is content to leave the concept on the level of sound bites and French surrender, haha, but here the case is made that the appeasers avoided war with Hitler not because they were afraid of him (although they were still weary from WWI), but because they sympathized with him so much. Hitler suppressed democracy, labor, Jews and other minorities, and until the Nazi-Soviet Pact, he appeared ready to take on the hated Communist ogre to the east. This appealed in various ways to the ruling classes of France, Britain, and the USA. We like to think that World War II was the "good war" and everyone came together in the fight against totalitarianism, but the reality was somewhat messier.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second part of this fascinating book continues to give heavy weight to mediums and knowledge gained through seances. however, the realism represented by the author, and his ability to see through the propaganda of the time is amazing, for a book written during the second world War. Great read!

[Ingrid Erwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed volume 2 of this book (I could only find the Simon Publications reprint that divided the book into two books).