Not much was funny about the intrepid, passionate, muckracking, American novelist Upton Sinclair. But a new novel about Sinclair is hilarious, bizarre, brilliant and wacko. Chris Bachelder's U.S.! opens with a still-dead Upton Sinclair sitting in the backseat of an old four-door Plymouth Valiant. Two young men have just exhumed his body.

As it turns out in this novel, this is not the first exhumation of the late Mr. Sinclair. It seems that since the author died in 1968, the American left has been bringing him back to life to aid their causes. Chris Bachelder talks with Susan Stamberg about the book.

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