4 h 21 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 4 h 21 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if a sound in the jungle draws you farther than your sense of danger allows?
In Jack London's The Red One, an unexplained sound draws English naturalist Bassett deep into the jungle of Guadalcanal. He comes to collect specimens, measure, and record. Now he wants to find the source of something he cannot explain. But the jungle holds villages whose people take heads and distrust strangers. His search carries him beyond safety.
This collection brings together four tales of adventure and obsession, with the title story setting science against awe. London writes in clear, strong sentences, filling the world with heat, sweat, insects, and danger. His people push past safety to pursue what they cannot let go. Action carries the ideas, and danger and violence appear without softening.
What you’ll discover
- A sound without explanation Follow Bassett's search through the jungle toward a mystery that holds his attention.
- Science meets awe Explore the tension between a naturalist's habit of measuring and the wonder he encounters.
- The pull of obsession Meet people whose pursuit of what matters to them takes them beyond safety.
- Heat, sweat, and danger Step into sharp jungle detail, where insects and danger give the search a physical edge.
- Stories with a hard edge Discover adventure told directly, with strong sentences and ideas carried through action.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this book if you love adventure yarns, far-off places, tall tales told by lively talkers, and characters who chase gold, glory or a mystery to the edge of the map.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A mystery pulls Bassett into danger
- Bassett turns devotion into a tool
- Jones makes adventure sound convincing
- A promised nugget draws Jones onward
- Tarwater refuses to surrender his hope
- Tarwater earns loyalty through useful work
- The outcasts give ruin a voice
- The teller shapes what listeners believe
- Desire connects the tales
Who’s who
- BassettA fastidious English naturalist, sick with fever in a cannibal village, who wants above all to see the source of a mighty sound.
- NgurnThe village's devil-devil doctor, who cures human heads over smoke, keeps the god's secret and wants Bassett's head for his collection.
- BalattaA bushwoman who finds Bassett near death, claims him as her own and risks terrible punishment out of love.
- Julian JonesA giant railroad engineer from Nebraska who tells a stranger about a vast nugget and wants a partner to go back for it.
- Sarah JonesHis small, sharp-eyed wife, who interrupts the story with one word and wants him kept away from Ecuador.
- John TarwaterA seventy-year-old Californian who sings an old chant and sets out for the Klondike to win back his family's lost land.
- LiverpoolA fierce, foul-mouthed young sailor who steers the party's boat and decides that the old man will go all the way.
- WhiskersOne of three one-armed outcasts by a fire, who claims to be Chauncey Delarouse and to have loved a Polynesian princess.
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The Red One in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
The Red One
by Jack London · 1918
A sick naturalist follows a thunderous sound through the Solomon Islands jungle, and cannibals wait at its source.
Medium level2–5 hours to read20 languages
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“Like Argus of the ancient times,”
In short
A sound rolls out of a mountain gorge in the Solomon Islands and fills earth and sky for a full hour. A sick naturalist named Bassett hears it from a beach and cannot stop chasing it.
The Red One at a glance
- Reading time
- About 2 h 35 min2 h fast, 3 h slow
- Length
- 36,400 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1918by Jack London
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A mysterious sound drags a naturalist inland
The first tale opens with the sound itself. Bassett, a naturalist lying sick in a village on Guadalcanal, times it by his watch and finds that it lasts a full hour.
Then the story goes back to the start. Bassett had landed to hunt a giant jungle butterfly. From the beach he heard the call, and he plunged into the bush with his servant Sagawa, who begged him to turn back and called the noise a devil-devil.
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Details
- First published
- 1918
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 2 h 50 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
London, Jack. The Red One. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-red-one.
London, J. (2026). The red one. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-red-one (Original work published 1918)
London, Jack. The Red One. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-red-one.
@book{london2026red,
author = {London, Jack},
title = {The Red One},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-red-one},
note = {First published 1918}
}
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What is The Red One by Jack London about?
It is a collection of four adventure tales. A naturalist chases a mysterious sound through a Solomon Islands jungle, a railroad man tells of a mountain of gold, an old man rushes to the Klondike, and three tramps trade love stories.
What is the Red One in the story?
The Red One is the name a jungle tribe gives to the god whose enormous voice rings over the island. Bassett hears the sound on a beach and spends the story trying to find out what makes it.
Is The Red One a true story?
No, these are invented tales. London dated all four in 1916, the year he died, and he drew on settings he knew, including the South Seas, the Klondike gold rush and the tramp life of the American road.
The author
Jack London
1876–1916 · American novelist and journalist
Jack London (1876–1916) was an American author, journalist and social activist. He was born in San Francisco and lived in California. He wrote novels, short stories and essays. His novels include The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea-Wolf (1904), White Fang (1906) and Martin Eden (1909). He died in California.
“Like Argus of the ancient times,”
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