Mammonart*. An Essay on Economic Interpretation* is a book of literary criticism from a Socialist point of view of the traditional “great authors” of Western and American literature (along with a few painters and composers). Mammonart was first published in 1925 and is part of the “Dead Hand” series—six books Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) wrote on American institutions. Sinclair was an American writer, muckraker, political activist, and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for Governor of California. He published nearly 100 books in several genres. He was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943.