Jimmie Higgins (originally published in 1919) portrays the dilemma of American leftists who felt temporarily obliged to support the ruling classes of England and France during the World War I. Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) was a prolific American novelist, essayist, playwright, short story writer, and juvenile book writer, whose works reflected the social problems of 19th Century industry. His two great boyhood heroes were Jesus Christ and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His novel Dragon's Teeth (1942) on the rise of Nazism won him the Pulitzer Prize. By the time Upton Sinclair died in November, 1968, he had published more than ninety books.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Upton Sinclair has a great effect on me I have to confess. After "Oil!" this is his second book and I am really impressed. Like Howard Fast he captures the ordinary life of an ordinary American worker vividly. Jimmie Higgins is a small town worker but he has a feature which haunts him till the last day of his life: he is an ardent Communist! The daily struggles of the socialists are well portrayed in the book. When the big catastrophe of World War 1 arrives, huge differences occur between the immigrant American citizen socialists. Germans side with their government, others try to realize internationalist policies by repudiating the imperialist war. Organising the workers against the bosses who struck deal with German or English arms manufacturers is a tough job. Even punishable with death! When faith or destiny plays its trick upon Jimmie Higgins he finds himself deep in the war he flatly refused to be a part of. He even manages to hold a front against invading Germans all by himself when all the French troops around himself get killed. He even meets the king himself while recuperating from his wounds. He is promoted to the rank of sergeant. The tide of the war begins to turn as the October Revolution succeeds. His regiment is transferred to a Soviet port in the north called Archangelsk. He realises that the reason for their being there is to gain a foothold and maybe become a spearhead against the Bolshevik Power. He contacts the Bolsheviks and begins to make propaganda among the soldiers against war. The ever worrying comrade Kalekin who supplies Jimmie needs not worry for he safely carries his secret...
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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3.5 out of 5 stars
2 reviews
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Socialist Party grunt flees war-time U.S. for Lenin's Russia
29 Dec 1998
By A Customer
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
Jimmie Higgins is the Forrest Gump of the "parlor pink" socialist propaganda put out by Upton Sinclair at the turn of the century. A down-on-his-luck, illiterate working stiff who gets caught up in the idealism of the socialist tide that had begun to well up in Europe and the United States in the early 1900s, Jimmie Higgins quickly gets caught up in a whirlwind of events that serve as a morality play for readers of the period. Jimmie meets Eugene Debbs, thinly disguised here as "The Candidate", the perennial plugger of the movement in America. He gets caught up in the party machinery, is hired by German "socialists" to blow up an ammunitions work only to find out that the men actually represented the Kaiser, joins the army to fight European imperialism, and finally ends up in Archangel in the Siberian Arctic to be introduced to Bolsheviks during the little known U.S. attempt to restore the czarists to power. The book is a thinly veiled work of propaganda and Upton Sinclair would never apologize for this. The novel was turned into a movie by the Soviets and was squashed by overwhelming anti-socialist sentiment here. For Upton Sinclair fanatics only. My copy was obtained from the University of Kentucky Press and has been out of print since the 1960s. Good luck in finding it.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Classic work of Upton Sinclair - FREE ON KINDLE
19 Feb 2013
By K. Bachelor
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Books are classic for a reason.
I was thrilled to be able to download the Upton Sinclair collections, and I am slowly getting to each of the books.
The books were referred to in some of the modern science books I read. That alone made me curious.
I am sure there are professional reviewers out there who have already said what needed to be said in their reviews for all of Upton Sinclair's works. I won't even attempt a review of the novel's content.
I just love that it was free and available to me, a Kindle user.
I was thrilled to be able to download the Upton Sinclair collections, and I am slowly getting to each of the books.
The books were referred to in some of the modern science books I read. That alone made me curious.
I am sure there are professional reviewers out there who have already said what needed to be said in their reviews for all of Upton Sinclair's works. I won't even attempt a review of the novel's content.
I just love that it was free and available to me, a Kindle user.
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3.5 out of 5 stars
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