I read this book for a comparison paper with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I soon found that it's three hundred pages thoroughly dwarfed the thousand in Ayn Rand's novel, due to it's dragging and morbid plot. I decided to at least give it one hundred pages for the story to develope, but found that after that trial period, all I really wanted was for Jurgis to die, so that the drudgery would end. If Upton hated American capitalism so much, why didn't he move elsewhere? I will never read another book by this man. -- Caleb Kelley