Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Jack London
How Southern California capitalism and one mysterious loner met, courted, married, and gave birth to our modern surfing culture
The author of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ never set foot on our shores, but he had a clear and highly personal vision of what we were and what we had been
FOR A WHILE George Orwell thought of calling his novel about life in a totalitarian future The Last Man in Europe.
The Man Who Invented Himself
Jack London carved himself a special niche in the annals of American literature.
For hoboes, the West was the land of milk and honey, of adventure, scenery, and easy living. A “land stowaway” hopped the first transcontinental train, and for six more decades they rode the rails
When young Jack London described the Reno of 1892 as “filled with … a vast and hungry horde of hoboes,” he was reporting no isolated phenomenon; shaggy, rootless men—tramps or hoboes—could be seen in every part of the West from the 1870’s down to the Second W
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