Big things are happening secretly all around, says Jack London's prescient hero Ernest Everhard in the 1908 novelThe Iron Heel,excerpted in this timely anthology of London's writings about war and revolution. Besides illuminating his surprising literary range,The Radical Jack Londonestablishes the iconic American author as both a product of his own era and a significant voice for ours. The book features works by London that have been unavailable for decades. In his insightful introduction, editor Jonah Raskin lays out the social, economic, and political contexts for London's polemical writings and shows London to be America's leading revolutionary writer at the turn of the twentieth century.
Jack London(1876-1916) was the author ofThe Call of the Wild(1903),The Sea-Wolf(1904), and the prophetic novelThe Iron Heel(1908), among some fifty books.Jonah Raskinis Chair of Communications at Sonoma State University and produces the website radicaljacklondon.com.
This splendid volume does more than reinstate Jack London as a leading voice of the American cultural left. Jonah Raskin documents how London struggled to reconcile his political and his personal desires, creating memorable art but failing to save himself. One of the world's most popular writers comes alive, in all his passion and agony. Michael Kazin, author ofA Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan
Interest in Jack London never flags. This first-rate anthology places London at the epicenter of the American radical tradition. Kevin Starr, University of Southern California
In this well conceptualized anthology, Jonah Raskin has resurrected works that have been unavailable for decades, makingThe Radical Jack Londona very timely presence for the twenty-first century. Raskin's own writing is forceful and engaging, and he is unblinkingly honest about London as person and as writer, never succumbilÓ&