The Call of the Wild (1903) is generally considered London's best work, London himself was a wild man: drunk heavily, whored, jailed, tramped, poached, prospected - the bastard son of a wandering Irish astrologer. The novel is London's reconciliation with his own wild nature - he eventually killed himself in 1916 with an overdose of morphine - but not before he produced a prodigious amount of work becoming one of the most popular authors of his age, and certainly one of the best storytellers. His work is at its best seen from the conflict between animal instinct and intellectual reason.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2008 cc-by-nd ( )

Wonderful Black library binding