Amazon.com description: Product Description: "The Road" is Jack London's collection of stories from his life as a hobo. In this entertaining collection of tales and autobiographical essays, London relates every aspect of the hobo's life -- from catching a train to cadging a meal. The wealth of experiences and the necessity of having to lie for a living brought depth London's subsequent stories. In "The Road," Jack London relates the tricks that hoboes used to evade train crews, and reminisces about his travels with Kelly's Army. Jack London later credited his story-telling skill to the hobo's necessity of concocting tales to coax meals from sympathetic strangers. As London confessed in this book, there was "a woman in the state of Nevada to whom I once lied continuously, consistently, and shamelessly, for the matter of a couple of hours. I don't want to apologize to her. Far be it from me. But I do want to explain. Unfortunately, I do not know her name, much less her present address. If her eyes should chance upon these lines, I hope she will write to me." Though different than "Call of the Wild" or "White Fang," Jack London continues to deliver in this book. London's "The Road" is quite likely the inspiration for Jack Kerouac's more famous rendition, written more than 50 years later.