If you have any interest in Jack London, you want to have this book. Buy it to thumb through at the same time as you read any other biography. This is like a lovingly assembled scrapbook. It is extremely rich in material; there must be, oh, an average of three photographs or pictures on each of its 276 pages.

Kingman seems to have found photographs of just about every place Jack London ever lived or worked and just about every person that figured in Jack London's life. How about... Johnny Heinold, owner of the "First and Last Chance Saloon?" here on p. 38; the schooner "Sophia Sutherland" on p. 43; here's Jack in Kelly's Army; here's the Erie County Penitentiary where he spent a month... here's George Sterling, here's Anna Strunsky, here's Cloudesley Johns... Here are pictures of Jack as a young sailor, Jack in the Klondyke, Jack at the Bohemian Grove, Jack on the farm...

This is a "pictorial biography" and the interest is in the pictures. The writing isn't inspired, but it is useful as a detailed outline of the events of Jack London's life. It has a useful bibliography.

Location of illustrations and the text are remarkably well laid-out. Reader friendly, does not require flipping pages to find illustrations. Kingman took ten years to create this most reliable reference and chronology.

This book has a number of short stories of Jack London, as well as his novel, The Game. Each story paints a pictire of a time long gone. Adventure, bravery, and honor are the values of the men of these stories. In a harsh time, the men and women had to be resilliant, and maintain thier cheer in the face of hardship.

The tales are a window into the past, and Jack London, one of the greatest writers of his time, captured the essense of life in the frontier, on the sea, and in the hearts and minds of the people of the past. Although only a century past, this era is as far from our modern society as the hard days of Egil Skaligrimson(one of the first Icelendic Vikings in the new world) or Ponce DeLeon.

These sorts of stories should be read by everyone, espically students of history and literature. Bravery in the face of hardship is something which we all should understand even in our comparitivly easy and rich times. We should attempt to capture the essence of this bravery and courage and pass it on for the future.