The Call of the Wild (1903) is London’s most well-known novel. It was hugely popular when it was first published and remains a favorite today. It also is considered one of the leading novels of the naturalist period. The Call of the Wild has many similarities with White Fang. It is the story of a dog who suffers the cruelties and hardships of nature before being adopted by a kind man.

John Barleycorn (1913) is London’s painfully straightforward account of his alcoholism, published only a few years before his death. It is the only autobiographical work of substantial length that London wrote, and it includes descriptions of the writer’s travels and adventures as well as of his struggles with alcohol.

My First Summer in the Sierra (1911), by John Muir, is the most popular work of the famous conservationist. It is the diary of a summer that Muir had spent in the Sierra Nevada Mountains decades earlier, in 1869. This book and others by Muir were instrumental in bringing American tourists to wilderness areas and in expanding the national park system.

The Red Badge of Courage (1895), by Stephen Crane, tells the story of a young soldier in the Civil War. Crane explores how the soldier’s inborn traits and his environment combine to mold his character and his behavior. Like White Fang, The Red Badge of Courage has a long history as both a literary and a popular success and is considered an important work of American naturalism.

Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Winning the Iditarod (1994), by Gary Paulsen, is the author’s account of his 1983 running of the Iditarod, Alaska’s famous, grueling dogsled race. Paulsen, who began the 1,150-mile, seventeen-day race by becoming lost, faced many of the same challenges described in London’s fiction, including bone-chilling cold, exhaustion, attacks by wild animals, and dogfights.