Jack London is a powerful witness to the political upheavals of the twentieth century and their terrifying contradictions. By turns impoverished laborer, renegade adventurer, war correspondent in Mexico, dedicated socialist, and writer of enormous worldwide popularity, London dramatized his ideas about modern societies through incidents of adventure, romance, and brutal violence. "The Iron Heel," an astonishing political fantasy, anticipates a United States dominated by a capitalist police state and ripped apart by urban warfare. Personal experiences lie behind "The People of the Abyss," which vividly re-creates the slums of East London, and the exhilarating camaraderie of hobo gangs roaming across America in "The Road." "John Barleycorn" describes in harrowing terms London's struggles with alcoholism, while the intensely autobiographical novel "Martin Eden" foreshadows his own death at age forty.
