*Starred Review* “I have drifted all my life—curiosity, that burning desire to know.” In the intensely curious drifter who penned these words, Haley recognizes one of the most unlikely yet compelling novelists of the twentieth century. Lacing his biographical narrative with acute insights, Haley recounts how the flame of curiosity was first kindled in the son of an impoverished spiritualist medium, particularly chronicling the young Jack London’s voracious boyhood reading of Melville, Kipling, and Flaubert. But only after his restless curiosity has schooled him in the harsh world outside of books—the world of panhandling, oyster-pirating, and prospecting—does London find his vocation in distilling the brutalities of life into the epiphanies of art. Careful research illuminates the creative process through which London forged such powerful works as Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Game. But alongside London’s curiosity-driven imaginative artistry, Haley traces a parallel strain of conviction-fired social activism, evident in works such as War of the Classes. Not all readers will share Haley’s admiration for an idealist intent on revolutionizing society—while himself keeping a valet and habitually mistreating his wife. But any reader who shares even a spark of London’s incandescent curiosity will relish this vivid portrait. --Bryce Christensen
Review
Booklist (Starred Review)
“Careful research illuminates the creative process through which London forged such powerful works as Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Game…[A]ny reader who shares even a spark of London’s incandescent curiosity will relish this vivid portrait.”
Library Journal
“Haley’s work is the sympathetically told story of a man unlucky in his birth to foolish parents, unlucky enough in his health to die at 40, and unlucky with women until his second wife, Charmian. Recommended.”
Wall Street Journal
“[A] valuable London biography. It surpasses Irving Stone’s 1938 Sailor on Horseback, giving us a well-delineated picture of a singular, complicated figure…These days we have little sense of the literary glory that was Jack London. Thanks to James Haley’s zeal, the author of [the fiercely imaginative Before Adam], not just the man of The Call of the Wild, is before us again.”
Daily Telegraph(UK)
“[Haley’s] argument is persuasive that the unexpurgated London has never been more relevant…His biography is polished, sleek, readable and pulls no punches.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“[A] gripping narrative…Haley understands what longtime scholars of London have often failed to see: that London had multiple lives, and explored his own identities in his fiction.”
Seattle Times
“[V]ividly drawn…Haley has done a fine job. His book is a compelling story about a man who, after the death of Mark Twain in 1910, was America’s most prominent author.”
Crosscut.com
“In Wolf, James L. Haley gives us a terrific, compact biography that helps to restore London as a complex, prodigious writer of much (perhaps too much) more than tales of adventure.”
Biography
“Rough-and-tumble, passionate writer who set the stage for Sinclair Lewis and John Steinbeck captured in tumultuous color.”
Irish Examiner (Cork)
"Wolf is a glorious achievement which will encourage readers to seek out more about and by Jack London.”
Dallas Morning News
“[Wolf] reads smoothly, and for any who lack a knowledge about this iconoclastic and sensational writer of the early 20th
century, it will make a pleasant bedside companion.”
USA Today
“James Haley’s fascinating biography is as much about London’s socialist politics and domestic turmoil as his best sellers.”
Washington Post
“James L. Haley’s sharply focused biography recaptures the breadth of London’s achievements and the intricacies of his personality…We can be grateful to Haley for restoring London to us in all his passionate conviction and flawed humanity.”
