About the Book
As D-Day approaches, an American spy is unmasked by Himmler's Gestapo and must flee the Nazis, in this novel in the Pulitzer Prize-winning historical saga.
In 1943, the once-unstoppable Nazi war machine is starting to falter. For a decade and a half, Lanny Budd's cover as a fine-art dealer and Fascist sympathizer has held firm, earning him the confidence of Hermann Göring and other top officials, including Adolf Hitler himself. With the Allies preparing to retake Europe, Lanny must make certain that the location of the invasion remains hidden from the Nazi high command. But his mission is compromised and his life endangered when Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's feared Gestapo chief, uncovers Lanny's true loyalties.
Now FDR's most trusted spy must run for his life, escaping into the European countryside with Hitler's executioners on his trail. His survival will require great courage, endurance, and ingenuity, but Lanny Budd is determined to live long enough to witness what he has waited so many years to see: the final collapse of the Third Reich.
One Clear Call is the thrilling ninth installment of Upton Sinclair's Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatization of twentieth-century world history. An astonishing mix of adventure, romance, and political intrigue, the Lanny Budd Novels are a testament to the author's singular talents as a storyteller.
About the Author :
Upton Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Oregon, on September 20, 1878, and was moved to New York City in 1888. Although his own family were extremely poor, he spent periods of time living with his wealthy grandparents. An intelligent boy, he did well at school, and at age fourteen, he entered New York City College. Soon afterwards, he had his first story published in a national magazine. Over the next few years Sinclair funded his college education by writing stories for newspapers and magazines. By age seventeen, Sinclair was earning enough money to enable him to move into his own apartment while supplying his parents with a regular income. Sinclair's first novel, Springtime and Harvest, was published in 1901. He followed this with The Journal of Arthur Stirling, Prince Hagen, Manassas, and A Captain of Industry, but they all sold poorly. In the early 1900s Sinclair became an active socialist, eventually joining with Jack London, Clarence Darrow, and Florence Kelley to form the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. In 1904, the editor of the socialist journal Appeal to Reason commissioned Sinclair to write a novel about immigrant workers in the Chicago meat-packing houses. The owner of the journal provided Sinclair with a $500 advance, and after seven weeks' research, Sinclair wrote The Jungle. Serialized in 1905, the book helped to increase the journal's circulation to 175,000. However, Sinclair had his novel rejected by six publishers. Sinclair decided to publish the book himself, and after advertising his intentions in Appeal to Reason, he got orders for 972 copies. When he told Doubleday of these orders, it decided to publish the book. The Jungle was an immediate success, eventually selling over 150,000 copies all over the world. Sinclair's next few novels--The Overman, The Metropolis, The Moneychangers, Love's Pilgrimage, and Sylvia--were commercially unsuccessful. In 1914, Sinclair moved to Croton-on-Hudson, a small town close to New York City where there was a substantial community of radicals. He pleased his socialist friends with his anthology of social protest, The Cry for Justice. Sinclair continued to write political novels, including King Coal, which is based on an industrial dispute, and Boston. He also wrote books about religion (The Profits of Religion), newspapers (The Brass Check), and education (The Goose-Step and The Goslings). In 1940, World's End launched Sinclair's eleven-volume series on American government. His novel Dragon's Teeth, on the rise of Nazism, won him the Pulitzer Prize. By the time Sinclair died in November 1968, he had published more than ninety books.
Review :
A great and well-balanced design...I think it the completest and most faithful portrait of that period that has been done or will likely be done.
-- "H. G. Wells praise for the series"
Few works of fiction are more fun to read; fewer still make history half as clear, or as human.
-- "Time praise for the series"
These historical novels engulfed me in the thrilling and terrible imperatives of history...Sinclair's historical acumen and his calculations about powerful institutions--government, press, corporations, oil cartels and lobbyists--remain remarkably shrewd and often prescient.
-- "New York Times praise for the series"
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 [Upton Sinclair's] novels.
-- "George Bernard Shaw praise for the series"
