The Great Klondike Stampede began in 1896 and ended about
three years later. An estimated 100,000 would-be prospectors headed for the
Yukon in search of fortune. Only a third of them ever made it there. About
4,000 actually became prospectors, and just a few hundred struck it rich. Jack
London was one of these starry-eyed optimists. He was barely out of his teens
when he dropped out of the University of California at Berkeley to spend a year
in the Klondike. He returned home with empty pockets, but a head brimming with
stories. His two most famous novels, Call of the Wild and White Fang, are filled
with the people and places he found there. Both are told from a dog’s point of
view: one is a domestic dog who goes wild, the other a wolf/dog who becomes
tame. Both have been adapted for cinema and television several times. My advice:
skip the movies. The books have all the adventure and none of the CGI dogs.
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