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Off-Ramp

Upton Sinclair: Author, Vegetarian, and Candidate for Governor?

About the Show

Over 11 years and 570 episodes, John Rabe and Team Off-Ramp scoured SoCal for the people, places, and ideas whose stories needed to be told, and the show became a love-letter to Los Angeles. Now, John is sharing selections from the Off-Ramp vault to help you explore this imperfect paradise.

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Corporation for Public Broadcasting

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Upton Sinclair: Author, Vegetarian, and Candidate for Governor?
Upton Sinclair

Anyone who went to high school in the last 50 years no doubt knows Upton Sinclair for his Chicago meatpacking expose "The Jungle," but he was much more than an undercover muckraker.

Sinclair moved to California in 1915 and by 1934 he had run for two congressional seats, formed California's ACLU and got the Democratic nomination for governor of the state. Off-Ramp's Kevin Ferguson talked to The Nation's Greg Mitchell, whose newly reprinted book "The Campaign of the Century" focuses on Sinclair's run for governor, and how the campaign gave birth to the modern American political campaign.