Book cover for Wide Is the Gate by Upton Sinclair

Wide Is the Gate

2016 Released
639 Pages
19-20 Hours
Audiobook Unavailable
Paperback Unavailable
Open Road MediaISBN 9781504026482

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning saga, an American faces the horrors of Nazi Germany and steps into the fire of the Spanish Civil War in service to his country. Lanny Budd's dedication to social justice has placed a strain on his marriage to his heiress wife, Irma, but as he moves through the 1930s, the international art dealer is unable to turn a blind eye to what is happening in Europe. As the Nazi Party solidifies its power in Germany, Lanny recognizes an opportunity to make a difference when his arms dealer father strikes a business agreement with Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler's second-in-command. Robbie Budd's alliance with the Luftwaffe commander and Lanny's art world reputation enable the younger Budd to move easily among the Nazi high command and gather valuable information for those who are dedicated to the destruction of Nazism and Fascism. It is a dangerous game that Lanny is playing, and it will carry him from Germany to Spain on a life-and-death mission on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. Wide Is the Gate continues New York Times–bestselling author Upton Sinclair's literary journey through the tumult of the twentieth century. Praise for the Lanny Budd Novels "Remarkably shrewd and often prescient." —The New York Times "Few works of fiction are more fun to read; fewer still make history half as clear, or as human." —Time "When people ask me what has happened in my long lifetime, I do not refer them to the newspaper files and to the authorities, but to [Sinclair's] novels." —George Bernard Shaw "The completest and most faithful portrait of that period that has been done or will likely be done." —H. G. Wells

Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, activist, and politician whose novel The Jungle (1906) led to the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Born into an impoverished family in Baltimore, Maryland, Sinclair entered City College of New York five days before his fourteenth birthday. He wrote dime novels and articles for pulp magazines to pay for his tuition, and continued his writing career as a graduate student at Columbia University. To research The Jungle, he spent seven weeks working undercover in Chicago’s meatpacking plants. The book received great critical and commercial success, and Sinclair used the proceeds to start a utopian community in New Jersey. In 1915, he moved to California, where he founded the state’s ACLU chapter and became an influential political figure, running for governor as the Democratic nominee in 1934. Sinclair wrote close to one hundred books during his lifetime, including Oil! (1927), the inspiration for the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood; Boston (1928), a documentary novel revolving around the Sacco and Vanzetti case; The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism, and the eleven novels in Pulitzer Prize–winning Lanny Budd series.

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