I don't know how you all thought this book was boring. Without all of those awesome details, you would be left with an empty shell of a plot and wouldn't be able to understand the characters. I especially enjoyed the way you could watch each of the immigrants grow and change over time. My favoite set of quotes comes from when Jurgis first hears about the worker's union and is repulsed. He can't believe that poeple would be complaining about their great jobs. (This attitude of Americans is a whole different topic to addreess) The union worker he's talking to just tell him to wait and see. Ironically, the workers predictions were correct. Several little sidebars like these make the book fun. On top of it all, I want to congratulate Sinclair about his great job of advertising for socialist party. Though, of course, most remember the book for it's meat descriptions, the millions who read the book at the time ALSO got a dose of Sinclair's strongest Socialism in his final chapters. I am willing to bet that Sinclair was two steps ahead of everyone else, and filled the book with these horror stories in order to get people to read the book. Otherwise, he knows that no one would have picked it up. Anyways, I recommend this book to anyonew doing a paper on a book, because it is easy to follow the consequences the book had in the US. Later