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    Before Adam
    Before Adam
    Before Adam
    Ebook148 pages3 hours

    Before Adam

    By Jack London

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    About this ebook

    Before Adam is Jack London's fictional tour de force. In it, he brilliantly recreates the dawn of humanity, depicting the prehistoric world as a place of dark conflict where only the fittest will survive. Tormented by a succession of terrifying dreams, the narrator is faced with the strange truth that his consciousness has become entwined with that of Big-Tooth, his mid-Pleistocene ancestor. Through these dream memories, he witnesses Big-Tooth's life as one of the “Folk” race—a life without developed language, social structure, or fire. He sees, too, the Folk's fierce battles for survival against the more advanced Fire People and the primitive Tree People. As he struggles to make sense of Big-Tooth's world, he begins questioning the very notion of eugenics, making Before Adam one of the most pertinent works of its time. American writer Jack London is the author of some of the finest naturalistic adventure stories of the 20th century, most memorably The Call of the Wild.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateApr 1, 2014
    ISBN9781780942094
    Author

    Jack London

    Jack London was born in San Francisco in 1876, and was a prolific and successful writer until his death in 1916. During his lifetime he wrote novels, short stories and essays, and is best known for ‘The Call of the Wild’ and ‘White Fang’.

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    • 3/5
      London is pretty much always entertaining, and no less so in this "recovered memory" of prehistoric human history. A quick and worthy read.
    • 3/5
      A brief and interesting "firsthand" account of our ancient ancestor's daily life experiences. I have never found London's works to be sophisticated, and certainly this book is more fantasy than real science based fiction. Nonetheless, an enjoyable and easy read worth your time.
    • 4/5
      My name is Adam so this slim softcover, obviously old and from whence it came, who knows?, had always dimly called out to me, "read me, read me." But I never did, for decades. But happy childhood memories of my dad's reading out loud to me Call of the Wild induced me, finally, to give it a try. I am glad I did. Before Adam is a fantastic tale of a modern homo sapiens who dreams every night of his alter ego, Big Tooth, a kind of proto man, almost apelike, and his friends and enemies, Red Eye, Lop Ear, Swift One, etc. In this earlier life, a distant memory of his ancestor, life is perilous, hard, fearful and often short. But at the same time it has its moments of fun, humor, friendship, and love of a sort for family and mates. London was one of the most successful, prolific, and wealthiest writers of his time, despite his relatively short life. You can see why as this book, and other stories of his that appeared in magazines, are real page turners. London's style is crisp and remains fresh even a century later. Like Mark Twain, and unlike someone like Herman Melville, he's an easy read in terms of both grammar, style, and vocabulary. This book deserves to be read and enjoyed and not just sit collecting dust on a bookshelf. Shame on me for taking 40 years to realize this.
    • 4/5
      Predates Clan of the Cave Bear by 75 years or so. Same idea, London launches right into human evolution in the 19teens. An amazing work, well-enough done.
    • 5/5
      6jjji
    • 5/5
      it´s surprising this story is about a century old, it could have been written nowadays. Of course it´s not fully scientific. It´s fiction, and nature laws are slightly different from the ones we know. It´s based on the idea that, somehow, experience can de inherited through genes. But that idea (Lamark's like) had already been left as non valid at the time the book was written, being preferred Darwin's theory of evolution (natural selection). The story is entertaining, the author manages to make the reader sympathetic to that half brute/half human predecessor of man who is the main character of the book and even succeed at giving its adventures a look of verity.

    Book preview

    Before Adam - Jack London

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