The book was noted in 2020 as having been very similar to the Coronavirus outbreak, especially given London wrote it at a time when the world was not as quickly connected by travel as it is today.

Set in 2073, this classic science fiction novel begins sixty years after a devastating epidemic wipes out most of humanity. James Howard Smith, one of the only survivors from the San Francisco area who remembers life before the plague, tries to impart the value of his wisdom to his grandsons as his time on Earth grows ever shorter.

Knowing only the savage world in which they have been raised, the feral boys cannot comprehend the scientific and technological wonders of a time before the Red Death and they mock their grandfather's indecipherable babble. A despairing Smith can only fear for the future of humanity . . .

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Jack London (January 12, 1876 November 22, 1916), was an American author who wrote The Call of the Wild and other books. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first Americans to make a huge financial success from writing.