award-winning Western Historian James L. Haley Paints A Vivid Portrait Of Jack London—adventurer, Social Reformer, And The Most Popular American Writer Of His Generation library Journal it Seems As If Jack London (1876–1916), Once The Highest-paid Writer In America Because Of The Phenomenal Success Of The Call Of The Wild In 1903, Suffers Fluctuations Of Popularity, Partly Depending On The Political Temper Of The Times. If His Reputation Is Again Rising, This New Biography By Haley (sam Houston: A Life) May Well Be One Of The Reasons. Raised In A Poor, Emotionally Impoverished Family, 15-year-old London Sought Camaraderie And A Rough Knowledge Of The World From His Fellow Dockside Outlaw Colleagues. He Soon Developed A Lifelong Passion For The Sea, Which He Satisfied With His Later Voyages To The South Pacific. His Youthful Conversion To Socialism Was Perhaps The Central Intellectual Fact Of His Brief Life, And When He Was Finally Accepted To Matriculate At Berkeley, London Saw His Fiction And Social Commentary Published In The Student Publication. He Was Soon Expelled, Though, And Then Freed To Sail The South Seas. Verdict Haley's Work Is The Sympathetically Told Story Of A Man Unlucky In His Birth To Foolish Parents, Unlucky Enough In His Health To Die At 40, And Unlucky With Women Until His Second Wife, Charmian. Recommended.—charles C. Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, Mo