THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS I On every hand stretched the forest primeval, -the home of noisy comedy and silent tragedy. Here the struggle for survival continued to wage with all its ancient brutality. Briton and Russian were still to overlap in the Land of the Rainbow's End-and this was the very heart of it-nor had Yankee gold yet purchased its vast domain. The wolf-pack still clung to the flank of the cariboo-herd, singling out the weak and the big with calf, and pulling them down as remorselessly as were it a thousand, thousand generations into the past. The sparse aborigines still acknowledged...

The experiences related in this volume fell to me in the summer of 1902. I went down into the under-world of London with an attitude of mind which I may best liken to that of the explorer. I was open to be convinced by the evidence of my eyes, rather than by the teachings of those who had not seen, or by the words of those who had seen and gone before. Further, I took with me certain simple criteria with which to measure the life of the under-world. That which made for more life, for physical and spiritual health, was good; that which made for less life, which hurt, and dwarfed, and distorted...

Michael, a brother of Jerry, is a novel by Jack London published in the United States in 1917. In France, it was first published in 1925 . This novel is the continuation of Jerry, dog of the islands (1917). summary Michael, an Irish terrier, was raised in the Solomon Islands. He now works as a hunter of Negroes on board a schooner whose mission is to recruit indigenous labor. The captain forgets accidentally on a beach and anchors without him. Michael then meets Dag Daughtry, steward on another boat. He sympathize and together, begin a journey around the world. But dramas point to the horizon...

CHAPTER I FOREWORD It began in the swimming pool at Glen Ellen. Between swims it was our wont to come out and lie in the sand and let our skins breathe the warm air and soak in the sunshine. Roscoe was a yachtsman. I had followed the sea a bit. It was inevitable that we should talk about boats. We talked about small boats, and the seaworthiness of small boats. We instanced Captain Slocum and his three years' voyage around the world in the Spray. We asserted that we were not afraid to go around the world in a small boat, say forty feet long. We asserted furthermore that we would like to do it....

REVOLUTION "The present is enough for common souls, Who, never looking forward, are indeed Mere clay, wherein the footprints of their age Are petrified for ever." I received a letter the other day. It was from a man in Arizona. It began, "Dear Comrade." It ended, "Yours for the Revolution." I replied to the letter, and my letter began, "Dear Comrade." It ended, "Yours for the Revolution." In the United States there are 400,000 men, of men and women nearly 1,000,000, who begin their letters "Dear Comrade," and end them "Yours for the Revolution." In Germany there are 3,000,000 men who begin...

IN THE FORESTS OF THE NORTH A weary journey beyond the last scrub timber and straggling copses, into the heart of the Barrens where the niggard North is supposed to deny the Earth, are to be found great sweeps of forests and stretches of smiling land. But this the world is just beginning to know. The world's explorers have known it, from time to time, but hitherto they have never returned to tell the world. The Barrens-well, they are the Barrens, the bad lands of the Arctic, the deserts of the Circle, the bleak and bitter home of the musk-ox and the lean plains wolf. So Avery Van Brunt found...

Story summary Joe Bronson, instead of studying for a school exam, goes out kite-flying with his school friends; on their way back he gets involved in fights with gang members in a poor part of the city. After he fails the exam the next day, he walks out of school and takes a ferry across the bay to Oakland. Looking at the boats on the wharf, he imagines the exciting life on a boat. His father, a businessman, has a liberal attitude to his son; but, critical of his recent behavior and poor school report, tells him that he might send him to a military academy. Joe later leaves a farewell note...

INTRODUCTION Boys delight in men who have had adventures, and when they are privileged to read of such exploits in thrilling story form, that is the "seventh heaven" for them. Such a "boys' man" was Jack London, whose whole life was one of stirring action on land and sea. Gifted as a story teller, he wrote books almost without end. Some of them, "The Call of the Wild," "The Sea Wolf" and "White Fang," have already been recognized as fine books for boys. Others, volumes of short stories, contain many of like interest, possessing the same qualities that have made the other and longer stories so...

Extract: DUTCH COURAGE "Just our luck " Gus Lafee finished wiping his hands and sullenly threw the towel upon the rocks. His attitude was one of deep dejection. The light seemed gone out of the day and the glory from the golden sun. Even the keen mountain air was devoid of relish, and the early morning no longer yielded its customary zest. "Just our luck " Gus repeated, this time avowedly for the edification of another young fellow who was busily engaged in sousing his head in the water of the lake. "What are you grumbling about, anyway?" Hazard Van Dorn lifted a soap-rimmed face...

A Daughter of the Snows (1902) is Jack London's first novel. Set in the Yukon, it tells the story of Frona Welse, "a Stanford graduate and physical Valkyrie" who takes to the trail after upsetting her wealthy father's community by her forthright manner and befriending the town's prostitute. She is also torn between love for two suitors: Gregory St Vincent, a local man who turns out to be cowardly and treacherous; and Vance Corliss, a Yale-trained mining engineer. The novel is noteworthy for its strong and self-reliant heroine, one of many who would people his fiction. Her name echoes that of...