At the beginning of the 20th century, Jack London, author of The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Martin Eden, was the most famous American writer of his time. He was alternately a vagrant, a gold prospector, a sailor, a rancher, a war reporter and a militant socialist. London symbolized America's ambitions, driving forces and contradictions, from the conquest of the West to the First World War.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Jack London, author of The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Martin Eden, was the most famous American writer of his time. He was alternately a vagrant, a gold prospector, a sailor, a rancher, a war reporter and a militant socialist. London symbolized America's ambitions, driving forces and contradictions, from the conquest of the West to the First World War.