The Roads of Man

Jack London has been a legendary writer of the beginning of the Nineteenth century: famous, prolific, controversial, and revolutionary, Jack London has been one of the most fascinating personalities in the history of US. But this is not all. In his life, Jack London was also a photographer (he would call his pictures “human documents”) and his camera has been his inseparable companion in his adventures and reportages all over the world. This book, with the introduction by Davide Sapienza, includes a vast selection of his photography reportages, together with his excerpts from his narrative and journalistic masterpieces. These include important landmarks in which Jack London was witness of key events of his times, like the Russo-Japanese War, the San Francisco earthquake, and the incredible Cruise of the Snark. For the first time, a book that focuses on Jack London the photographer, merging his visual report with his narratives to look at a more complete picture of the artist. This book represents an unprecedented look at the writer and his photographic documentation, a fascinating and adventurous journey through the world of Jack London. Edited by Alessia Tagliaventi, it includes 70 black and white pictures by the famous author and incredible photographer Jack London. Raised in poverty as an illegitimate child, Jack London dropped out of school to support his mother, working in mind-deadening jobs that would foster a lifelong interest in socialism. Brilliant and self-taught, he haunted California’s waterside bars, brawling with drunken sailors and learning about love from prostitutes. Full of laughter, restless and courageous, Jack London was one of the most adventurous figures of this time. He ascribed his worldwide literary success largely to hard work - to ‘dig’, as he put it. Between 1900 and 1916 he completed more than 50 fiction and non-fiction books, hundreds of short stories and numerous articles. His lust for adventure took him from the beaches of Hawaii to the gold fields of Alaska, where he experienced firsthand the struggles for survival he would later immortalize in classics like White Fang and The Call of the Wild. A hard-drinking womanizer with children to support, Jack London was no stranger to passion when he met and married Charmian Kittredge, the love of his life. Despite his adventurous past, London had never before met a woman like Charmian; she adored fornication and boxing, and willingly risked life and limb to sail and explore. She typed his manuscripts while he churned out novels, serving as his inspiration and his critic. Lover, fighter, and onetime hobo, Jack London lived large and died before he was forty.