Norris' novel McTeague, published in 1899, is considered by some to be his greatest work and one of the most influential pieces of American naturalism. It concerns a San Francisco dentist and his wife who slide into moral degradation when he loses his job and they both are forced to live on the streets.

The Pit: A Story of Chicago by Norris is the second part of a trilogy about wheat that started with The Octopus. It examines the financial exchanges in Chicago, where the decisions regarding the value of wheat are made. The third part of the trilogy was never finished before Norris died.

Upton Sinclair's classic 1904 novel The Jungle takes a cold, unflinching look at the brutal conditions in the Chicago beef processing plants. Like this novel, it examines the ways in which the social order corrupts and destroys...