Upton Sinclair (September 20, 1878-November 25, 1968) was an American author and political activist who wrote about one hundred books in varying genres. Most of his works criticized social and economic conditions of early twentieth-century America. While living in California, he twice ran for the U.S. Congress as a Socialist, but lost both times. He is most famous for The Jungle (1906), a novel exposing working and health conditions in meat packing plants, and for Dragon’s Teeth (1942), which won him the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.