The cause and the effect

0 Comments | USA TODAY, June, 2006 | by Jacqueline Blais

*Then: First printing, 20,000 copies, Doubleday, Feb. 26, 1906; in the USA, 100,000 in print by end of 1906; within five months of publications, 17 translations.

*Effect: Stirred the public to favor the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 (already in the works) as well as the Meat Inspection Amendment.

*Now: Translated into at least 35 languages; number printed over the years is "very, very difficult" to determine, partly because the copyright has run out and it's in the public domain, says Rebecca Cape of Lilly Library at Indiana University, where Sinclair's papers are housed.

*Two new paperbacks:

Modern Library trade paperback ($9.95), introduction by Jane Jacobs, afterword by Anthony Arthur (Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair).

Penguin Classics...