A Captain of Industry: Being the Story of a Civilized Man is a tale about a spoiled but good natured son of a corrupt industrialist who manipulates the stock market for his own amusement and gain. He dismisses his ex-fiancé who is dying of consumption and pleads with him to look after the daughter they had together years whom he never knew. He loses his millions through fraudulent market transactions only earn it back, destroying other companies in the process. Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in vairous genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle exposing conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry. Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence."