John Barleycorn

Jack London
Oxford

Jack London said of John Barleycorn that it was "unlike any other other book ever published," and at the time of it's publication it certainly was. Widely ignored and overlooked in 1913, as it still is today, John Barleycorn's complex and rewarding narrative, documenting his drinking career that began in childhood and continued right through until a few years short of death his in 1916, paints a strikingly contradictory portrait of who Jack London really was, apart from the ruggedly noble ideal of manhood that is an indelible part of his legend.

John Barleycorn is the first intelligent treatise on alcohol in American literature, an "A to Z of drinking," as London called it, and it stands as an important part of his legacy. Essential reading for fans of London's writings.