Four plays: The Naturewoman, The Machine, The Second-Story Man, and Prince Hagen. Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) was a prolific American novelist, essayist, playwright, short story writer, and juvenile book writer, whose works reflected the social problems of 19th Century industry. His two great boyhood heroes were Jesus Christ and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His novel Dragon’s Teeth (1942) on the rise of Nazism won him the Pulitzer Prize. By the time Upton Sinclair died in November, 1968, he had published more than ninety books.