Jack London

Set against the natural beauty of south sea islands and alive with the hazards of headhunters, sharks, storms and disease, these eight powerful short stories include 'Mauki,' which tells of a young Melanesian sold into slavery; as well as 'The Terrible Solomons,' 'The House of Mapuhi,' 'The Whale Tooth,' 'Yah! Yah! Yah!,' 'The Heathen,' 'The Inevitable White Man,' and 'The Seed of McCoy.' Pure entertainment for lovers of adventure tales and Jack London fans.

Entertaining, atmospheric, and action-filled--yet difficult to obtain until now--the eight short stories in Jack London's A Son of the Sun center on the thrilling exploits of Captain David Grief in the dangerous and exotic South Seas. Captain Grief encounters the adventurers, scoundrels, pirates, and opportunists who followed the example of their colonial predecessors and exploited the islands and their resources early in the twentieth century. Inspired by London's own voyage through the South Seas on board his self-made yacht, the Snark, these stories paint a colorful--and at times horrifying--picture of the remote South Pacific. Thomas R. Tietze and Gary J. Riedl provide concise and illuminating introductions to each story as well as informative notes. The volume is enlivened by reproductions of London's own photographs and maps, and by the illustrations that accompanied each story when first published.

The People of the Abyss is a classic work about poverty and recounts the time the author spent in London. Born in San Francisco, he became a political activist and socialist at an early age. Written after posing as an American sailor stranded in the East End of London during 1902 - sleeping in doss houses, living with the destitute and starving - this is perhaps Jack London’s most important work. As well as being a literary masterpiece, The People of the Abyss stands as a major sociological study. While other American writers were blindly celebrating the glories of the British Empire at its peak, Jack London was asking why such misery was to be found in the heart of a capital city of immense wealth. This is a work of reportage - London lets his observations speak for themselves. A precursor to the writings of George Orwell, this book remains a standard-bearer critique of capitalism, as powerful today as it was then.

Warnsignale über der Bucht von San Francisco. Aus den Wellen des Meeres wird der über Bord geschleuderte Schriftsteller van Weyden von einem Robbenfänger gerettet. Ein gespenstischer Schoner, die 'Ghost', ihr absoluter Herrscher, Kapitän Wolf Larsen, der harte Existenzkampf an Bord des Robbenfängers, Stürme, wilde Abenteuer und eine zarte Liebesgeschichte - ausreichend Material für Jack London, um einen der berühmtesten und fesselndsten Schauerromane zu schreiben, der auch heute noch beispielhaft ist für spannende Unterhaltung.

As a young man in the summer of 1897, Jack London joined the Klondike gold rush. From that seminal experience emerged these gripping, inimitable wilderness tales, which have endured as some of London’s best and most defining work. With remarkable insight and unflinching realism, London describes the punishing adversity that awaited men in the brutal, frozen expanses of the Yukon, and the extreme tactics these adventurers and travelers adopted to survive. As Van Wyck Brooks observed, “One felt that the stories had been somehow lived–that they were not merely observed–that the author was not telling tales but telling his life.” This edition is unique to the Modern Library, featuring twenty-three carefully chosen stories from London’s three collected Northland volumes and his later Klondike tales. It also includes two maps of the region, and notes on the text.

Published in the year 2001, In Hawaii is a valuable contribution to the field of Social Science.

Stolen from his home and family, a dog named Buck must quickly learn the harsh law of survival among the men and dogs of the gold-crazed North. His intelligence, courage, and cunning transform him into a feared leader. As wolves attack and men grow desperate, Buck must heed the call of the wild. Only the strong will survive.

A thrilling epic of a sea voyage and a complex novel of ideas, The Sea-Wolf is a standard-bearer of its genre. It is the vivid story of a gentleman scholar, Humphrey Van Weyden, who is rescued by a seal-hunting schooner after a ferryboat accident in San Francisco Bay. London uses Van Weyden's ordeal at the hands of a schooner's devious crew to explore powerful themes of ambition, courage, and the innate will to survive. The Sea-Wolf also introduces Jack London's most memorable, fully realized character, Wolf Larsen, the schooner's brutal captain, who ruthlessly crushes anyone standing in his way. As Gary Kinder states in his Introduction, "Wolf Larsen is one of the most carefully carved characters in American literature.... London, himself, seems as fascinated as the reader with his own creation." "London's...is a vision of exceptional and crucial vitality."--James Dickey

Before anyone knew there was such a thing, Jack London gave us the natural: Young Pat Glendon has never drunk alcohol nor tasted tobacco. He loves nature, is afraid of cities, and is shy of women. And he is a perfect fighter. Summoned from the city to consider such a prospect, cynical Sam Stubener, manager of prize-fighters, is struck by the boy's extraordinary athletic grace—and soon man and boy are off to San Francisco to take on the heavyweight world. The Abysmal Brute is the story of natural grace pitted against worldly brutishness. A subtle social drama played out in the arena of sport—in a day long before sport moved to the center of American culture—it is also a rousing romantic tale in the tradition of one of our great storytellers. As Pat hones his skill—and his curious style—on one champion fighter after another, he contends for the heart of a lovely admirer and for the soul of professional boxing, whose rampant corruption his blows expose.

In this classic by a master of the adventure story, Jack London describes his around the world attempt by sail, which was inspired by the examples of his heroes Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Joshua Slocum. He sailed out from San Francisco, writing constantly and produces this series of sketches recording the voyage itself. These pieces, collected together, he called The Cruise of the Snark. The writings reveal London’s extraordinary love of adventure.

A young man in modern America is terrorized by visions of an earlier, primitive life. Across the enormous chasm of thousands of centuries, his consciousness has become entwined with that of Big-Tooth, an ancestor living at the dawn of humanity. Big-Tooth makes his home in Pleistocene Africa, a ferocious, fascinating younger world torn by incessant conflict between early humans and protohumans. Before Adam is a remarkable and provocative tale that thrust evolution further into the public spotlight in the early twentieth century and has since become a milestone of speculative fiction. The brilliance of the book lies not only in its telling but also in its imaginative projection of a mindset for early humans. Capitalizing on his recognized ability to understand animals, Jack London paints an arresting and dark portrait of how our distant ancestors thought about themselves and their world. This commemorative edition features a map of the world of Big-Tooth, an epilogue by Loren Eiseley, striking illustrations by Charles Livingston Bull, contemporary reviews, and a listing of peoples and characters.

Jack London (1876-1916), at his peak, was the highest paid and the most popular of all living writers. Because of financial difficulties, he was largely self educated past grammar school. A large part of his knowledge was obtained from the Oakland Public Library. London draws heavily on his life experiences in his writing. He spent time in the Klondike during the Gold Rush and at various times was an oyster pirate, a seaman, a sealer, and a hobo. His first work was published in 1898. From there he went on to write such American classics as "Call of the Wild", "Sea Wolf", and "White Fang". Quiet Vision has published more than 20 of his works and is working to publish all his fiction.

Indicts the savagery of prison life as San Quentin prison inmate Darrell Standing escapes his confinement and torture only by withdrawing into dreams of past lives during what he calls his "eternal recurrence on earth"

A road novel fifty years before Kerouac, "The Valley of the Moon" traces the odyssey of Billy and Saxon Roberts from the labor strife of Oakland at the turn of the century through Central and Northern California in search of land they can farm independently - a journey that echoes Jack London's own escape from urban poverty. As London lost hope in the prospects of the socialist party and organized labor, he began researching a scientific and environmentally sound approach to farming. In his novel, it is Saxon, London's most fully realized heroine, who embodies these concerns. The Valley of the Moon is London's paean to his second wife Charmian and to the pastoral life and his ranch in Glen Ellen, the Valley of the Moon.

Fiction U. S. A. $7.95Canada $10.95To this day Jack London is the most widely read American writer in the world," E. L. Doctorow wrote in The New York Times Book Review. Generally considered to be London's greatest achievement, The Call of the Wild brought him international acclaim when it was published in 1903. His story of the dog Buck, who learns to survive in the bleak Yukon wilderness, is viewed by many as his symbolic autobiography. "No other popular writer of his time did any better writing than you will find in The Call of the Wild," said H. L. Mencken. "Here, indeed, are all the elements of sound fiction." White Fang (1906), which London conceived as a "complete antithesis and companion piece to The Call of the Wild," is the tale of an abused wolf-dog tamed by exposure to civilization. Also included in this volume is "To Build a Fire," a marvelously desolate short story set in the Klondike, but containing all the elements of a classic Greek tragedy. "The quintessential Jack London is in the on-rushing compulsive-ness of his northern stories," noted James Dickey. "Few men have more convincingly examined the connection between the creative powers of the individual writer and the unconscious drive to breed and to survive, found in the natural world. . . . London is in and committed to his creations to a degree very nearly unparalleled in the composition of fiction."

This text aims to capture the spirit of the American wilderness and its people, in the early 20th century. These youthful tales also include important social themes and ideas. By the age of 29, Jack London was the highest-paid and most widely read author in America, thanks to the huge popularity of The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf, and White Fang. Themes of these books also pervade this collection of short stories: survival though adaptation, compassion for the less fortunate, a respect for physical power in both man and nature, and the need for social justice.