The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics

In 1934, voters hoping to turn the tide of the Great Depression backed an unlikely candidate for governor of California: Upton Sinclair, muckraking author of The Jungle and lifelong socialist. Amazingly, Sinclair swept the Democratic primary, leading a mass movement called EPIC (End Poverty in California). Alarmed, Sinclair’s opponents launched an unprecedented public relations blitzkrieg to discredit him. The result was nothing less than a revolution in American politics, and with it, the era of the “spin doctor” and the “attack ad” on the screen was born. Hollywood took its first all-out plunge into politics. In a riveting, blow-by-blow narrative featuring the likes of Franklin Roosevelt, Irving Thalberg, H. L. Mencken, William Randolph Hearst, Will Rogers, and Katharine Hepburn, Greg Mitchell brings to life the outrageous campaign that forever transformed the electoral process.