King Coal, Upton Sinclair
King Coal, Upton Sinclair
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King Coal
A Novel

Author: Upton Sinclair

Narrator: Grover Gardner

Unabridged: 12 hr 12 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/05/2014

Synopsis

Well known for The Jungle, his scathing expos├® of the Chicago meatpacking industry at the turn of the twentieth century, Upton Sinclair here takes on yet another massive industry: coal mining.Based on the 1914 and 1915 Colorado coal strikes, King Coal describes the abhorrent conditions faced by workers in the western United States' coal mining industry during the 1910s. The story follows Hal Warner, a rich man looking to get a better view of the lives of commoners. It is a tale of struggle, threats, and violence, of hardened men and the advocacy for workers' rights. In this business, the road to unionization is a rocky one.

About Upton Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (1878–1968) was an American author, muckraker, and political activist, and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California. Sinclair’s work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943. In 1906, The Jungle exposed labor and sanitary conditions in the US meatpacking industry, causing a public uproar that led to the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. It was his research for The Jungle that led to his devotion to fasting.

About Grover Gardner

Grover Gardner, a professional actor, director, and teacher, has narrated over 650 audiobooks. He was named one of the Best Voices of the Century by AudioFile magazine as well as a Golden Voice, and he has received over twenty AudioFile Earphones Awards. He has also won two coveted Audie Awards, as well as being a three-time finalist. In 2005, Publishers Weekly named him Audiobook Narrator of the Year.

Reviews

Goodreads review by James on November 29, 2014

This is the story of the lives and deaths of coal miners in the Western United States in the early Twentieth Century. It is about Americans and immigrants in the land of the free, working as slaves, essentially. And then, their fight back. The postscript to this book is essential. In it, the author p......more

Goodreads review by Chuck on July 30, 2018

You load sixteen tons, what do you get Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store Those lines, composed by Merle Travis and popularized by Tennessee Ernie Ford, pretty much sum up the situation in coal mining that persisted......more

Goodreads review by Thom on December 11, 2012

Slavery wasn't ended with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation or with the Union’s defeat of the Confederacy. Well into the Twentieth Century slavery prevailed throughout the United States. True, the buying and selling of human flesh was no longer practiced but the Industrial Revolution enslaved huma......more

Goodreads review by Maria on April 20, 2010

I found this book to be a truly captivating representation of the hypocrisy and oppression that the early 20th century coal miners encountered. While the plot is not as notable as his earlier work, The Jungle; King Coal is laced with it's own gruesome depiction of the corruption caused by greed and......more

Goodreads review by Johnny on October 10, 2015

It’s interesting that an executive of Massey Energy was sentenced for criminal negligence with regard to a coal mine disaster on the very week I finished King Coal, Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel about energy companies (the General Fuel Company), coal miners, and unions. Sinclair’s novel was abou......more

Quotes

“Sinclair layered fiction and reportage and social-justice advocacy. He aimed his novels like missiles, wanting them to explode. Sadly, the targets for this novel—coal barons using the Republican Party as a tool for corporate sovereignty—remain with us...King Coal may be forgotten, but it’s far from irrelevant.” BookPage

“Sinclair’s achievement was impressive…He saw through the lies of his era and exposed a world long hidden from view. He showed compassion for the weak and the poor, the powerless and the despised. He created images and characters that are poignant and memorable. He fueled anger at injustice. It is no fault of his that the old lies have lately been repeated, that important lessons have been forgotten, and that somehow we now find ourselves back in the jungle, with and odd feeling of déjà vu.” Eric Schlosser, New York Times bestselling author of Fast Food Nation, praise for the author

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