Jack LondonThe Iron Heel: 100th Anniversary Collection

An absolute stunning book! Although written over 100 years ago, it’s eerie while reading to see some of London’s authoritarian predictions playing out before our eyes in 2020. For fans of We, 1984, Brave New World etc. you will not be disappointed!

This is a book I reread every few years, one of the early dystopian novels that are truly worth reading.

If I had to assign to this work a specific theme, I would call it Jack London’t socialist education. Given the actual voting history of these United States during Jack London’t lifetime, that fact hardly comes as a surprise. “The rise of (the Socialist) vote clearly indicates the swift growth of the party of revolution. Its voting strength in the United States in 1888 was 2068; in 1902, 127,713; in 1904, 435,040; in 1908, 1,108,427; and in 1910, 1,688,211 (P. 49 footnote). That kind of explosion is almost unthinkable in today’s political world, although the recent storm of enthusiasm for Donald Trump could prove me wrong. And what does Jack London make of all this? “‘Never in the history of the world was society in so terrific flux as it is right now. The swift changes in our industrial system are causing equally swift changes in our religious, political, and social structures. An unseen and fearful revolution is taking place in the fibre and structure of society. One can only dimly feel these things. But they are in the air, now, to-day. One can feel the loom of them–things vast, vague, and terrible’” (p. 89). Then continued on p. 90: (a)nd that great humanist, Abraham Lincoln, said, just before his assassination: ‘I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country…. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.’ These few citations should give you a fair idea of what this novel is all about. The Call of the Wild or White Fang it’s not, It’s not even Martin Eden. But if you can spare the time and energy to read a couple of hundred pages of Jack London’s prose, I assure you: you won’t be disappointed.RRB27 October 2022Hudson, New York, U. S. A.

The description of this book goes so far as to say "Each book in the collection contains the ... cover from the first edition (but it is not just a photocopy.)", but, unfortunately, it's worse than a photocopy.While the item preview makes this look like a high quality cover (or at least something nice for the money) the reality is using a photocopy would have been better. It seems like someone scanned the first edition's cover back in 1998, scaled it up, and printed that scan larger, blockier, and fuzzier onto this paperback.Not just to judge the book by its cover: Overall, the price is good if you just want a cheap copy of the story, but if you want something that looks nice you might want to find a different version.

This is the story of upper class Avis, who falls in love with lower class Ernest, and has her eyes opened to the ills of society by him. The first two-thirds of the book are taken up with Ernest verbally besting the men of the upper class in debates, Avis admiring Ernest's manliness and intelligence, and Avis seeing with her own eye how terrible things are for the lower classes and how predatory the upper classes are. From there, Avis joins Ernest in working for socialism, there is a detour in which the author describes his beloved home in California, and then the events unfold, increasingly catastrophically, until the abrupt end.The book is written to be a found manuscript of Avis's. This conceit allows the introduction to be more of a framing device (it is written hundreds of years later, and tells the outcome of all the events in the story), and allows the author to include numerous and fairly extensive footnotes. These provide historical context for the time in which the book was written, and range from a brief biography of Rockefeller, quotes from the likes of Lincoln, and explanations for terms that maybe were considered slang at the time (e.g., "fake" is footnoted as "false"). While I find these latter types of footnotes fascinating when I come across them, as they provide glimpses into how language has changed since the book was written, the use of so many footnotes makes the whole undertaking rather dry. In addition, the series of debates where Ernest presents arguments in favor of socialism (heavily footnoted) come across as very stilted now. I could see how at the time, this might read as "Aha, look at how well-spoken this character is and how the upper class men have nothing to say that could refute him!", but it does not translate well to a modern reader. This is an issue with the style of the whole earlier section really, the language used is more antiquated than I expected it to be. Having said that, when the action picks up, it really picks up, and the unfortunately quite short later section can hold its own with any dystopian book.This is another one of those dystopian books that seems to have largely been forgotten, like Anthony Burgess's The Wanting Seed, which nobody seems to talk about but is truly excellent. The Iron Heel is certainly an uneven book, and I am not sure I could recommend it for its literary merits. The world presented here though, in which capitalism is king and there is a strong socialist message, both make this one worthwhile.

The cover is thin and cheap feeling which really lets down the ergonomic feel of reading this book. However, if you don't care about that it's fine as the print inside is perfectly fine. Good size font, good quality pages etc, just the cover lets it down.

A socialist diatribe. Not worth the trouble of reading