The story of Jack London's life is one of color and excitement. It is also the story of a dogged determination that overcame all obstacles of poverty.

Self-willed, temperamental, a great gambler with life, his was a constant struggle to make money enough to pay for his lavish enterprises. And always, the lure of adventure took him to new and exciting places—Hawaii, Japan, Samoa, New Zealand, Tasmania, Australia, China—and always he came back home again to his beloved California.

At twelve, Jack London was a wharf rat on the Oakland waterfront. His contact with sailors made him hunger for the sea, and so he bought a skiff, rigged it with a home-made sail, and meandered around the Estuary and San Francisco Bay. At fifteen, desperate at the deadening toil in a cannery, he borrowed money, bought a sloop—the Razzle Dazzle—and became an oyster pirate.

From that time on, Jack London's feet were set solidly on adventure's trail. At seventeen he became a member of the crew of a whaling ship that made a seven-months cruise off the coast of Siberia. Later, by rail and on foot, he covered much of the United States and Canada, and during these wanderings he decided to change his way of life and become a writer. He entered Oakland High School at nineteen, and in his frantic pursuit of knowledge, completed the course in a year and a half, then passed the entrance examinations to the University of California.

Later, spurred on by stories he heard of the gold rush, he made his way to the Klondike, and the force of his experiences there led to the period of story writing that brought him fame and made his name one synonymous with adventure. You never think of Jack London but that Call of the Wild, Martin Eden, The Iron Heel, White Fang, come immediately to mind—titles that continue to be best-sellers in this and European countries.

From the dust jacket