6. The Jungle - Upton Sinclair (1906)
Author Jack London compared the precision and impact of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle to earlier novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, and he wasn't far from the mark. Admittedly there is a completely different issue being dealt with in Sinclair's book - the horrendous conditions and immoral treatment of immigrant workers present in the American meatpacking industry. Sinclair certainly was a Man with a Muck-rake, as many of his journalistic endeavours sought to expose corruption (non-readers may recognise his name as the author of Oil!, a loose source for the film There Will Be Blood). The Jungle is interesting in that the effect it had is not at all what the author intended: his reason for writing was specifically to expose the exploitation of immigrant factory workers, while readers latched instead to the issue of food safety. The Jungle brought Sinclair national acclaim, and he admitted the book was popular "not because the public cared anything about the workers, but simply because the public did not want to eat tubercular beef". Go figure. Nonetheless, both issues underwent significant discussion and renovation in the decades following, and practices were altered due in large part to Sinclair's book. To this day, The Jungle remains a touchstone for conversations on working conditions and national quality controls in the United States and throughout the world.