The Octopus

Like his more famous contemporary Upton Sinclair, American author BENJAMIN FRANKLIN NORRIS, JR. (1870-1902) also highlighted the corruption and greed of corporate monopolies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries... themes that continue to make his work riveting reading more than a century later. The Octopus, first published in 1901, is the tale of a war between wheat growers in California and the Railroad Trust. Rancher Magnus Derrick and railroad representative S. Behrman square off-to disastrous results-as poet Presley, a stand-in for Norris, observes and chronicles the tragedy. The first part of Norris's projected "Trilogy of the Epic of the Wheat," The Octopus is followed by 1903's The Pit, also available from Cosimo. (Norris died before he could write the third volume, The Wolf.)

This is a turn-of-the-century epic of California wheat farmers struggling against the rapacity of the Pacific and Southwestern Railroad, which will stop at nothing to extend its domination. The company controls the local paper, the land, the legislature and, when the farmers organize to protect themselves, even manages to control their representative on the state rate-fixing commission. An unremitting tale of greed and betrayal, originally intended as one-third of Norris' never-completed "Epic of the Wheat" trilogy.