London, born in 1876 and died in 1916) was an unlikely author of classic American fiction, but that is what he turned out to be after an early life in San Francisco and Oakland where he was a manual laborer.  A one year trip to the Klondike in 1897 provided him with his most valuable material, and despite a meager education, he wrote over 50 books and was an acclaimed author and wealthy man in his lifetime.  He sailed to the Solomon Islands, Hawaii, and the Caribbean.  The Call of the Wild is about Buck, a huge and gentle dog living on a farm in California when he is dognapped and sold as a sled dog in the Klondike.  He has terrible and wonderful masters, but eventually returns to his wild origins and leads a wolf pack in the frozen north.  The remaining stories chronicle tales of dogs, men, and the unforgiving Alaskan/Canadian north country including my favorite of all times, To Build a Fire.  London excels at evoking the terror, pain, and fear of starvation, frostbite, and overwhelming fatigue as his characters battle an unforgiving climate and terrain.