When God Laughs And Other Stories

Jack London unflinchingly gazes upon lives that make most people avert their eyes, in "When God Laughs and Other Stories,"

The downtrodden, the broken, the crooked, the washed-out . . . all of them, London saw, had tales worth the telling. Whether speaking of diamond thieves reveling over ill-gotten gains or of slaves suffering in a dystopian 26th-century America, London shows a deep understanding of the power of hope -- and the implacable force of fate.

"We never win," as one characters says. "Sometimes we think we win . . . a little pleasantry of the gods."