Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" describes a callous America in which the dollar trumps justice. It famously exposed the American meatpacking industry's loathsome practices and prompted federal consumer-protection laws. It is, however, primarily a sympathetic sketch of the foreign born, those fabled "masses yearning to breathe free" that Americans welcome in poetry and disdain in the breach. A study published last 2005 by Daniel J. Cohen in "The Journal of American History" finds "The Jungle" to be among the top five supplementary texts assigned in the U.S. undergraduate history survey. In this article, the author contemplates whether Sinclair's masterpiece is best taught as journalism, literature, or history. He concludes that "The Jungle" should be taught as both a transcription of social live and a work of literary imagination, as both reportage and social criticism.