Jack London

In Jack London’s novel, Martin Eden personifies debates still raging over the role and purpose of education in American life.

It’s important to understand why some workers might be motivated to weather scorn, rejection and even violence from their peers.

Sinclair Lewis and the small-town science of yearning.

In the literature of pestilence, the greatest threat isn’t the loss of human life but the loss of what makes us human.

The rise, fall, and afterlife of George Sterling’s California arts colony.

A new history examines the lost promise and fierce persecution of the IWW.

Labeled a local eccentric, millionaire James Eads How used his inherited wealth to support vagrant communities.

With an eye toward U.S. power, Americans spread the sport making its Olympic debut.

Reading the literature of past plagues and suddenly seeing our present reflected in a mirror.

Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle has come to symbolize an era of muckraking and reform. But its author sought revolution, not regulation.

A biographer of Day talks about what we can learn from the iconic activist.

Some kind, some weird, some unbelievably harsh.

How Upton Sinclair’s 1934 run for governor of California inspired a cult.

Oakland’s lopsided boom.

Ambrose Bierce deviated from the refined eeriness of English-style ghost stories for his haunting descriptions of fateful coincidence and horrific revelation.