Wolf

Reviews / Votes

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."