Jack London (1876-1916) found fame with his wolf-dog tales and sagas of the frozen North, but Cecelia Tichi challenges the long-standing view of London as merely a mass-market producer of potboilers. A onetime child laborer, London led a life of poverty in the Gilded Age before rising to worldwide acclaim for stories, novels, and essays designed to hasten the social, economic, and political advance of America. In this major reinterpretation of London's career, Tichi examines how the beloved writer leveraged his written words as a force for the future.

Tracing the arc of London's work from the late 1800s through the 1910s, Tichi profiles the writer's allies and adversaries in the cities, on the factory floor, inside prison walls, and in the farmlands. Thoroughly exploring London's importance as an artist and as a political and public figure, Tichi brings to life a man who merits recognition as one of America's foremost public intellectuals.

This enhanced e-book edition of Jack London features significant archival motion picture footage. Eight ebook enhancements take readers into the motion-picture world of Jack London's 1900s--to the very sights that impacted his bestselling writings. Readers get front row seats to the terrifying San Francisco earthquake of 1906, to the Hawaiian beachfront where London first saw the Waikiki "surf riders," to ringside where prizefighters battled for championships. These and other historic film footage clips make this an ebook for the twenty-first century.