The Call of the Wild, with eBook, Jack London
The Call of the Wild, with eBook, Jack London
11 Rating(s)
List: $11.99 | Sale: $8.40
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The Call of the Wild, with eBook

Author: Jack London

Narrator: Patrick Lawlor

Unabridged: 3 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/04/2008

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

Buck lives a content life. Half St. Bernard, half shepherd, he is top dog on a California ranch. But the gold rush in the Klondike has produced an enormous demand for sled dogs, so when a gardener at the ranch needs to pay off a gambling debt, stealing and selling Buck is a quick way to do it.

Having never been mistreated, Buck soon learns that man can be the cruelest animal. He is whipped, beaten, and caged, but never broken. Confronted by the law of survival, Buck learns to fight, steal, and pull a sled. He takes pride in his new strength and ferocity. Buck manages to escape this life of abuse and learns to love a new master more than his own life. He gradually discovers the skills of his forbears and finds his home in the primordial forest—eventually, Buck cannot resist the call of the wild.

This classic book brings out the true spirit of the gold rush days at the turn of the last century. It portrays the brutality, kindness, love, and folly that Jack London experienced first-hand during his time in the far north. The Call of the Wild was his first successful book, and it catapulted him to literary fame.

About Jack London

Jack London was born in San Francisco in 1876. After he was deserted by his father, an itinerant astrologer, he was raised in Oakland by his mother. Although his youth was marked by poverty, he became an avid reader by the age of ten. Young Jack frequented the Oakland Public Library, where he was influenced by the works of Flaubert, Tolstoy, and other major novelists. After leaving school at the age of fourteen, London worked as a seaman, rode freight trains as a hobo, and joined in protest armies of the unemployed during the hard times of the 1890s. In 1894, he was arrested in Niagara Falls and jailed for vagrancy. He then made a vow to better himself. Later these hard-life adventures provided rich material for his well known works, such as The Sea-Wolf. London educated himself in public libraries, and at the age of nineteen, he was accepted to the University of California at Berkeley. However, London left the school before the year was over and went to seek a fortune in the Klondike gold rush of 1897. His attempt to find gold was unsuccessful, and he spent a harsh winter near Dawson City suffering from scurvy before returning to San Francisco.

For the remainder of 1898, London tried to earn his living by writing, finding his first success with The Son of the Wolf in 1900. That same year he married Elisabeth Maddern, but left her and their two daughters three years later to marry Charmian Kittredge. After publishing his first book, he produced a steady stream of fiction novels and short stories. In 1901, London ran unsuccessfully on the Socialist Party ticket for mayor of Oakland. In 1902, he went to England, where he studied the backside of the British Empire. His report about the economic degradation of the poor in The People of the Abyss became a surprise success in the United States but was decried in England. In 1904, London traveled to Korea as a correspondent for one of William Randolph Hearst's newspapers to cover the war between Russia and Japan. The next year he published his first collection of nonfiction pieces, The War of the Classes, which included lectures on socialism.

In 1907, London and his second wife attempted a sailing trip around the world aboard the Snark. They aborted the journey in Australia due to hardships. In 1910, London purchased a ranch land near Glen Ellen, California, and devoted all his energy and money to improving it. He also traveled widely and reported on the Mexican Revolution. In 1913, London's ranch house burned to the ground.Debts, alcoholism, illness, and fear of losing his creativity darkened the author's last years. Jack London died on November 22, 1916.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sasha on November 25, 2020

I guess it's important to remember that this isn't just a socialist fable: it's also a book about a dog. That's certainly all I thought, when I was ten and I read and re-read this for the first several times. I just really liked dogs, and we couldn't have one, so I read a lot of books about them. He......more

Goodreads review by Sean Barrs on April 11, 2020

Men are so cruel. The way they break animals is deplorable; they use them, exploit them and abuse them all in the name of sport, entertainment and human convenience. Men are cruel. They try to conquer rather than living in a world of mutual respect; it’s man who has lost his nature, and he imposes s......more

Goodreads review by brian on March 29, 2008

i am a dog obsessive. i'm nuts. dogs are my moby dick. they're my opera-house in the jungle. if i had a genie in a bottle, i'd wish away all human life (including my own) so dogs could take over the world. wait. that'd be wish number two. number one would be that i had an olympic sized swimming pool......more

Goodreads review by Mark on March 23, 2025

I remembered discovering either Call of the Wild or Whitefang when I was a boy and really liking it, so on finding this on our shelves I read it to Celyn (12 but too disabled to read). I found myself translating on the hoof as the book was written in 1903 and much of the language is quite Dickensian.......more

Goodreads review by Ben on January 07, 2013

I defy anyone - man, woman or child - not to like The Call of the Wild. It's the most exciting adventure, the most moving love story, the deepest meditation on a creature and its place in nature. If you aren't cheering for Buck the dog by the end of this you're either hard-hearted or a cat-lover.......more