Jimmie Higgins

In Jimmie Higgins, Upton Sinclair turns his searching gaze upon the obscure yet indomitable figure of the "little man" in history—the pamphlet carrier, the hall-sweeper, the foot soldier of ideals. The novel is at once intimate and expansive: intimate in its tender rendering of a humble worker whose loyalties are vast as continents; expansive in its evocation of an age convulsed by war, ideology, and the reordering of the modern soul.

Jimmie himself is not cast in heroic bronze. He is slight...