Andrew Sinclair – författare

The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories collects some of Jack London's most profound and moving allegorical tales. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Andrew Sinclair with an introduction by James Dickey.The Call of the Wild, London's masterpiece about a dog learning to survive in the wilderness, sees pampered pet Buck snatched from his home and set to work as a sled-dog. White Fang, set in the frozen tundra and boreal forests of Canada's Yukon territory, is the story of a wolf-dog struggling to survive in a human society every bit as violent as the natural world. This volume of Jack London's famed stories of the North also includes 'Batard', in which an abused dog takes revenge on his owner; and 'Love of Life', in which an injured prospector, abandoned by his partner, must struggle home alone through the wilderness, stalked by a lone wolf.In his introduction, James Dickey probes London's strong personal and literary identification with the wolf-dog as a symbol and totem. Andrew Sinclair, London's official biographer and the volume's editor, provides a brief account of London's life as a sailor, desperado, socialist, adventurer and acclaimed author.Jack London (1876-1916) was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco, California. By the age of sixteen he had left school, worked in a canning factory, spent time as an oyster pirate and been a member of the Fish Patrol in the San Francisco Bay. In 1893 he joined a sealing cruise, which took him as far abroad as Japan. In 1896 he was caught up in the gold rush to the Klondike river in north-west Canada, which became the inspiration for The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906).If you enjoyed The Call of the Wild, you might like Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, also available in Penguin Classics.

The changing role and status of women in America from colonial times to the present, and the American woman's unrelenting struggle for complete equality with men are the major themes of this work. The works of leading feminists, suffragists, abolitionists, unionists, and temperance workers are explored.

'I would rather have been in London under siege between 1940 and 1945 than anywhere else,' John Lehmann said, 'except perhaps Troy in the time that Homer celebrated.'Paradoxically perhaps the 1940s was a decade of cultural efflorescence. Writing, painting, theatre, cinema and dancing all thrived: Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, T. S. Eliot, George Orwell and Laurence Olivier all produced some of their best work in this period.In this sweeping and important book, Andrew Sinclair recreates the world of the 1940s with its encounters and characters, its conflicts and its discoveries, its hopes and its disillusions. It was a world of pubs and clubs, where scarce drink could be found and the war forgot. It was the time of the short piece, the poem, the story and the sketch. Anyone who knew anyone in the loose coterie of Fitzrovia could have anything published. Everything printed was read by a nation avid for learning and waiting for action. War Like a Wasp recreates a feverish and democratic time using the words of the period. In his original and witty account of the decade, Andrew Sinclair has made sure nobody will ever think of the 1940s in the same way again.'Soho and the disease writers caught there, Sohoitis, are the main enthusiasm of War Like a Wasp. They make Sinclair's book a keen Remembrance of Times Pissed - Dylan Thomas brawling, brawling, getting the DTs, Dan Davin slugging or about to be slugged, the unsubsidised editor Tambimuttu (known to some as Tuttifrutti) cadging drinks and poems, louche painters clustered about Nina Hamnett's dying Parisian flame, huge Anna Wickham biting people in the head, all the rough traders, brief encounters and lost girls.' Valentine Cunningham, the Observer 'He has a talent for creating memorable phrases. He calls Dylan Thomas 'the poet with lips like Michelin tyres'. He describes the aftermath of a bombing raid in prose that is uncommonly vivid. He makes you see and smell the terrible damage.' Michael Sheldon, Washington Post

The prohibition of liquor in the United States from 1920 to 1933 created the myth of the flapper and gangster. Andrew Sinclair's account was the first comprehensive study and it shows how this extraordinary experiment was the product of the age-old conflict of country against city, of the God-fearing farmer against the corrupt urban rich and the new immigrants with their imported religions and beer. Prohibition represented the last attempt of rural America to stem the tide of history that was transforming the country from an agricultural to an industrial nations. It stood for tradition and the old American way of life. Its defeat was tragedy as well as a comedy. The lessons of such an attempt at social control are relevant to all societies, old and new.'This is a definitive biography of an era; a social history, comprehensive, detailed, documented, and well written.' Arthur Weinberg, Chicago Tribune'Here is a work of real social history, at once scholarly and entertaining, thoughtful, penetrating and analytical.' John A. Garraty, The New Leader

The scene is Cambridge in the early 1960s. Ben Birt, an intellectual Brando from a grammar school, sees the University through proud, bawdy and anarchic eyes. Classless but deeply class-conscious. Brought up on Shakespeare and the classics, much influenced by contemporary French and American, he talks a vivid new language. Ben, above all, is alive. He does: and does not apologize for what he does. He gives to life without giving in; and takes from life without being taken in. He ends up on his own, beginning to see Cambridge has more to offer than a three years' muckabout in a festering fen.'Very clever indeed . . . This portrait of la vie de boheme universitaire should raise squeals of outraged delight . . . all along the line from Belgravia to Budleigh Salterton.' Daily Telegraph

Man and Horse is a magisterial history of the mounted warrior and the relationship with his steed. Andrew Sinclair takes as his inspiration Walter Prescott Webb’s seminal work, The Great Plains. The horse until very recently has been the decisive factor in determining military success. Great exponents of the art of equestrian warfare include, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, King Arthur, Saladin, the Knights of the Templar, the Reivers of the Scottish Borders, the Mongols, North American Indians, the Confederate forces during the American Civil War and the Boers. Sinclair also explores the uses of the horse by highwaymen and figures such as Ned Kelly. Andrew Sinclair brilliantly shows that the art of warfare from horseback with its culture of mobility has always been at conflict with the urban domesticated culture. This tension has created much of the great art and culture of humankind. This is a hugely ambitious and exhilarating book that cannot fail to enthral and stimulate.

The political use of terror has always been with us, whether in the murderous seizing of power by the ancients, through the outlawed campaigns of guerrillas, or via the state sanctioned terror of war. From Homer to Al Qaeda, terrorism has flourished in one form or another, bloodily shaping our history.Andrew Sinclair’s unique book brilliantly explores the methods and thinking behind terrorism and shows how the nature of terror has not changed since the days of the Assassins and the Mongol hordes. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, An Anatomy of Terror dissects the uses of atrocity from the Roman destruction of Carthage to the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center. Bold, incisive and compelling, An Anatomy Of Terror is an essential history for our times.