Tales of the Fish Patrol. In this classic collection of stories drawn from his own experiences, the author looks back on his days as a teenager aboard the fishing boats of San Francisco Bay. In the early 1900s, men of all stripes descended on these waters to plunder its rich oyster beds.
Jack London, pseudonym of John Griffith Chaney, American novelist and short-story writer whose best-known works—among them The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906)—depict elemental struggles for survival. During the 20th century he was one of the most extensively translated of American authors.
Deserted by his father, a roving astrologer, he was raised in Oakland, California, by his spiritualist mother and his stepfather, whose surname, London, he took. At age 14 he quit school to escape poverty and gain adventure. He explored San Francisco Bay in his sloop, alternately stealing oysters or working for the government fish patrol. He went to Japan as a sailor and saw much of the United States as a hobo riding freight trains and as a member of Charles T. Kelly’s industrial army (one of the many protest armies of the unemployed, like Coxey’s Army, that was born of the financial panic of 1893). London saw depression conditions, was jailed for vagrancy, and in 1894 became a militant socialist.
London educated himself at public libraries with the writings of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche, usually in popularized forms. At 19 he crammed a four-year high school course into one year and entered the University of California, Berkeley, but after a year he quit school to seek a fortune in the Klondike gold rush. Returning the next year, still poor and unable to find work, he decided to earn a living as a writer.
London studied magazines and then set himself a daily schedule of producing sonnets, ballads, jokes, anecdotes, adventure stories, or horror stories, steadily increasing his output. The optimism and energy with which he attacked his task are best conveyed in his autobiographical novel Martin Eden (1909). Within two years, stories of his Alaskan adventures began to win acceptance for their fresh subject matter and virile force. His first book, The Son of the Wolf: Tales of the Far North (1900), a collection of short stories that he had previously published in magazines, gained a wide audience.
During the remainder of his life, London wrote and published steadily, completing some 50 books of fiction and nonfiction in 17 years. Although he became the highest-paid writer in the United States at that time, his earnings never matched his expenditures, and he was never freed of the urgency of writing for money. He sailed a ketch to the South Pacific, telling of his adventures in The Cruise of the Snark (1911). In 1910 he settled on a ranch near Glen Ellen, California, where he built his grandiose Wolf House. He maintained his socialist beliefs almost to the end of his life.
Jack London’s output, typically hastily written, is of uneven literary quality, though his highly romanticized stories of adventure can be compulsively readable. His Alaskan novels The Call of the Wild (1903), White Fang (1906), and Burning Daylight (1910), in which he dramatized in turn atavism, adaptability, and the appeal of the wilderness, are outstanding. His short story “To Build a Fire” (1908), set in the Klondike, is a masterly depiction of humankind’s inability to overcome nature; it was reprinted in 1910 in the short-story collection Lost Face, one of many such volumes that London published.
What if you could illuminate a personal gateway that leads to inner strength, virtuous living, and enduring peace?
James Allen’s uplifting text illuminates the quest for self-mastery by emphasizing positive thought, ethical conduct, and spiritual harmony. Adapted for modern readers, The Shining Gateway underscores that each of us carries the capacity for profound transformation—a radiant journey that begins with how we choose to think, feel, and act.
What You’ll Discover in This Modern Translation:Key virtues that propel you toward higher livingTechniques for sustaining a positive, resilient mindsetThe link between inner discipline and outer harmonyEncouragement to see challenges as catalysts for self-growth
Imagine walking a bright, purposeful path every day—one in which your highest ideals guide each choice, cultivating a sense of deep fulfillment and tranquility. James Allen’s timeless guidance helps you unlock the shining gateway within.
Enter the radiant path. Get your copy now and kindle the inner light that leads to self-mastery and peace
Gerry Galligan's first book is a bold and expansive travel diary recounting his assembling of a small team of Irish mountaineers and their attempts on unclimbed mountains and unexplored valleys in the remote corners of the Indian Himalaya. Getting there, the team see the hardships of the sub-continent, while in the mountains they experience storms, dangers and failure before ultimately, success and contentment. But it is when Gerry returns to the mountains alone and his subsequent experiences overlanding across Asia and Europe back to Ireland that we start to get a glimpse of the big, wide world out there. A world of temples, festivals, holy cows, Kalashnikovs, donkey herders, corruption, opportunists, stoners and sages. Gerry gives us an insight into the day-to-day lives of mountain peoples, the dysfunctional functionality of India. He finds charm and tolerance in Pakistan and a surprising openness in today's Iran. We travel across rural Turkey and work our way back to the efficient and affluent West, where right on cue Gerry meets his first breakdown on a German train. Climbing Ramabang; One man's understanding of mountains, myth and mayhem.
Explore the grizzly tale of Charleston's most infamous serial killers from the beginning of their reign of horror till their eventual incarceration and execution.
In 1819, a young man outwitted death at the hands of John and Lavinia Fisher and sparked the hunt for Charleston's most notorious serial killers. Former homicide investigator Bruce Orr follows the story of the Fishers, from the initial police raid on their Six Mile Inn with its reportedly grisly cellar to the murderous couple's incarceration and execution at the squalid Old City Jail. Yet there still may be more sinister deeds left unpunished, an overzealous sheriff, corrupt officials, and documents only recently discovered all suggest that there is more to the tale. Orr uncovers the mysteries and debunks the myths behind the infamous legend of the nation's first convicted female serial killer.
'Mr Maimane, good evening to you and, with the greatest of respect, who are you?'
This is how journalist Jeremy Maggs began his television interview with Mmusi Maimane in 2011 when he was unveiled as the Democratic Alliance's mayoral candidate for Johannesburg. Since then, the charismatic Maimane's rise from obscurity to leader of the DA in 2015 has been nothing short of meteoric.
His anointment as leader of the DA made history, marking the completion of this political party's transformation from a 'white' political party to one whose new leader shared similar experiences to those of the majority of voters. Yet there are those, even within the party, who denounce Maimane as nothing more than a puppet dancing to the tune of former leader Helen Zille and Eastern Cape leader Athol Trollip.
So who is the real Maimane? Experienced political reporter S'thembiso Msomi goes behind the scenes to examine how and why Maimane rose to head up the opposition party. He delves into Maimane's formative years, his time at the pulpit in the church, and his family, to bring substance to the man.
Msomi also examines Maimane's first year as head of the DA in the run-up to the local government elections, assessing how this young man has negotiated the often treacherous waters of political power. Finally, the author attempts to answer these burning questions: is Maimane his own man, and can he deliver the electorate that the DA so fervently desires?
In this powerful and inspiring memoir, a Pakistani immigrant shares his story of finding new freedoms and a new faith in America.It’s easy to talk about freedom. But unless someone has lived in a world that suffocates freedom, it’s difficult to appreciate the liberty found in America. This is the true story of a Pakistani Muslim who immigrates to the United States for college and discovers five transformational freedoms along the way: the freedom to fail and start over, to love, to choose one’s faith, to be an entrepreneur, and to self-govern.Contrasting these precious freedoms with the life he lived in Pakistan, Ali’s story reveals that God is the true source of liberty as He works in people’s lives to bring about redemption. A call to value and preserve American freedoms, Beyond the Golden Door is also an invitation for readers to consider ultimate freedom in Jesus Christ.
A riveting account of the two years literary scholar Mikita Brottman spent reading literature with criminals in a maximum-security men’s prison outside Baltimore, and what she learned from them—Orange Is the New Black meets Reading Lolita in Tehran.
On sabbatical from teaching literature to undergraduates, and wanting to educate a different kind of student, Mikita Brottman starts a book club with a group of convicts from the Jessup Correctional Institution in Maryland. She assigns them ten dark, challenging classics—including Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Poe’s story “The Black Cat,” and Nabokov’s Lolita—books that don’t flinch from evoking the isolation of the human struggle, the pain of conflict, and the cost of transgression. Although Brottman is already familiar with these works, the convicts open them up in completely new ways. Their discussions may “only” be about literature, but for the prisoners, everything is at stake.
Gradually, the inmates open up about their lives and families, their disastrous choices, their guilt and loss. Brottman also discovers that life in prison, while monotonous, is never without incident. The book club members struggle with their assigned reading through solitary confinement; on lockdown; in between factory shifts; in the hospital; and in the middle of the chaos of blasting televisions, incessant chatter, and the constant banging of metal doors.
Though The Maximum Security Book Club never loses sight of the moral issues raised in the selected reading, it refuses to back away from the unexpected insights offered by the company of these complex, difficult men. It is a compelling, thoughtful analysis of literature—and prison life—like nothing you’ve ever read before.