Customer Reviews

Burning Daylight

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"Burning Daylight" was Jack London's best selling book during his lifetime, yet amazingly since his death, the book has been totally neglected except for an occassional reprint, and currently it is again out of print. The book begins as a two-fisted macho adventure on the Klondike, as the hero --nicknamed Burning Daylight -- becomes the most successful entrepreneur during the Alaskan Gold Rush. However, after acheiving his fame and fortune, he finds no more challenge in the north and heads to the States for new worlds to conquer. But, first he is flim-flammed out of his fortune by Wall Streeters. However, he learns the lesson of dog-eat-dog and becomes as much of a scoundrel as those who robbed him. He ventures to California and envisons the future success of Oakland, buys property, sets up utilities and public transportation systems through overbearing and shady tactics. He begins to drink, starts to go soft in the belly, loses his good looks and vitality. And then, for the first time, he falls in love. The last third of the book charmingly relates how a good woman turns a now bad man around. It is a love story. A rousing adventure. A trieste on the ills of big business. All superbly written by Jack London. It's easy to see why this book was so popular in London's day. If you can find it, read it. It will be time well spent.

This novel which was serialized in the New York Herald in 1910 is a most enjoyable read. It's larger than life and set in a landscape of courageous deeds and a wide variety of dangers. It is also a tender love story and a lesson on what really matters in a world gone crazy with a lust for money and power. Jack London truly got it right and this book, which was the best selling of his works in his lifetime, is certainly worth revisiting.

In starts in the Yukon when our hero, nicknamed "Burning Daylight" loses what seems a small fortune in a poker game. To make up for his loses, he bets on a mail route he can create during the long winter months. He and his partner are then subject to cold and storm and lack of food during Alaska's dark months. But he does win his bet and that very same day goes looking for a gold mine. I shuddered at the depravations and near starvation he had to go through. And I identified with him and hoped he would win his goal. He does this. But the story is just beginning. He then goes on to move to California, where he takes other kind of chances and is soon worth millions of dollars. Life seems good for him as the years go by and he soon falls in love with his secretary. But she rejects him over and over again.

How this all plays out is the stuff of legend. It takes place in a time and a place when men took huge risks, both with body and soul. And it introduces a woman who, actually, can relate to the modern women of today.

I loved this book. It introduced a time and a place that is no more and is certainly exaggerated in true Jack London style. But I literally couldn't put it down and related to the hero as well as the woman he loved. Hooray of the author for creating a book which has indeed stood the test of time.

burning daylight is a man of the wild, with a great sense of grandeur. when he does something, he wants to do it in a grand fashion. but he wants more. he wants to be part of a greater game, join an inner circle. a very interesting life story, but dwells at times. one of his best.

One of the greatest books I've ever read.London wrote deeply, but simply about life in a way a 20 year old, back in 1973, could understand.I Stumbled into a paperback edition, back then, with 15 cents written on the cover as what was charged for the book. Sadly, it's been lost along the way, but now I have a Kindle copy!!!
Burning Daylight is , basically, a tale of a "niechean like superman" in "turn of the century" garb. An epic story and the best "love story" I've ever read. If you like this, then head on over to "Martin Eden" for the best Tragedy ever written