Kerouac's tragic love affair with the bottle made him the most notorious drinker of the beat generation.

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1922, he attended Columbia University in New York City, where he met William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, with whom he would become the heart of the beat movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

The most gifted and influential beat writer, Kerouac exploded onto the American literary scene with the publication of On the Road in 1957. His wild, uninhibited writing style was only matched by his own ferocious adventures deep in the American night.

Sadly, ruined by alcoholism, his last days were dark and confused. He died in 1969 at the age of forty-seven of a massive abdominal hemorrhage brought on by drinking.

Books by Jack Kerouac

• Visions of Cody
• Satori in Paris
• Scattered Poems
• Lonesome Traveler
• The Town and the City
• The Dharma Bums
• Pomes All Sizes
• On the Road
• The Subterraneans
• Dr. Sax
• Mexico City Blues
• The Book of Dreams
• Big Sur
• Visions of Gerard
• Desolation Angels
• Tristessa
• Vanity of Duluoz
• Maggie Cassidy
• Book of Blues