Part science fiction, part dystopian fantasy, part radical socialist tract, Jack London's The Iron Heel offers a grim depiction of warfare between the classes in America and around the globe. Originally published nearly a hundred years ago, it anticipated many features of the past century, including the rise of fascism, the emergence of domestic terrorism, and the growth of centralized government surveillance and authority. What begins as a war of words ends in scenes of h...

When Jack London died in 1916 at age forty, he was one of the most famous writers of his time. Eighty years later he remains one of the most widely read American authors in the world. The first major critical study of London to appear in a decade, Male Call analyzes the nature of his appeal by closely examining how the struggling young writer sought to promote himself in his early work as a sympathetic, romantic man of letters whose charismatic masculinity could carry more signifi...

How and why did public opinion—long cherished as a foundation of democratic government—become an increasing source of concern for American Progressives?Following World War I, political commentator Walter Lippmann worried that citizens increasingly held inaccurate and misinformed beliefs because of the way information was produced, circulated, and received in a mass-mediated society. Lippmann dubbed this manipulative opinion-making process “the manufacture of consen...

Dark Borders connects anxieties about citizenship and national belonging in midcentury America to the sense of alienation conveyed by American film noir. Jonathan Auerbach provides in-depth interpretations of more than a dozen of these dark crime thrillers, considering them in relation to U.S. national security measures enacted from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s. The growth of a domestic intelligence-gathering apparatus before, during, and after the Second World War raised unsett...

Like the characters in the popular dime novels of the time, London's heroes display such manly virtues as courage, loyalty, and steadfastness as they conftont the merciless frozen expanses of the north. Yet London breaks free of stereotypical figures and one-dimensional plots to explore deeper psychological and social questions of self-mastery, masculinity, and racial domination. The uneasy relationship between the Native Americans and whites lies at the heart of many of the stories, while...

Originally published in “London Magazine” in 1912, “The Scarlet Plague” is a post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Jack London. The year is 2073 and its sixty years after the 'Red Death' decimated the population of the earth. A survivor called James Smith lives in the San Francisco area, travelling around with his grandsons who live as primeval hunter-gatherers. One day, he recounts his life before the epidemic and tells of how the 'Scarlet Death' came to be. This volume will appeal to...

A framing story is told in the first person by Darrell Standing, a university professor serving life imprisonment in San Quentin State Prison for murder. Prison officials try to break his spirit by means of a torture device called "the jacket," a canvas jacket which can be tightly laced so as to compress the whole body, inducing angina. Standing discovers how to withstand the torture by entering a kind of trance state, in which he walks among the stars and experiences portions of past live...

'A Daughter of the Snows' is acclaimed author Jack London's debut novel as well as the novel that began his trademark passion for the frozen Yukon. In this powerful debut, we follow Frona Welse, an incredibly determined and forthright woman as she returns to her small Canadian home town after graduating from Stanford. In this small community she faces prejudice, harassment and exclusion, but her impressive personality soon attracts many suitors and she finds herself in the midst of a love ...

George Orwell's "The Complete Novels of George Orwell" is an anthology that encapsulates the author's profound explorations of totalitarianism, social injustice, and the complexities of human nature. Through a stylistic lens marked by clarity and a stark, journalistic approach, Orwell combines rich narrative techniques with incisive political commentary. His works, such as "1984" and "Animal Farm," emerge not just as cautionary tales but as timeless reflections on the struggle between the ...

Stevenson's title for these tales of imagination clearly shows what he intended their character to be. Plainly they were not meant to be realistic. Their stilted, artificial style is out of keeping with such an object. They were evidently to be stories which are entertaining in the same way that the "Arabian Nights" is entertaining, with just as little pretence of realism. As a child in his grandfather's manse at Colinton he had devoured the eastern tales; the New Arabian Nights, written w...

For the first time in digital publishing, Delphi Classics is proud to present the complete works of Aristotle. The Ancient Classics series provides eReaders with the wisdom of the Classical world, with both English translations and the original Latin and Greek texts. This comprehensive eBook presents rare works, beautiful illustrations, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)Features:* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Aristotl...

Utopia. A community or society possessing highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities. It may be a dream, but it's a dream that has inspired writers for thousands of years. Plato's "Republic" may be the very first utopia presented to a mass audience, but Thomas More coined the term with his 1516 book Utopia (included here), which describes a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean. The term (and its antonym, dystopia) quickly entered the English language. And here are 19 other work...