Originally subtitled “An Adventurous Education, 1935–1946,” this is a key volume in Jack Kerouac’s lifework, the series of autobiographical novels he referred to as With the same tender humor and intoxicating wordplay he brought to his masterpieces and , presents the formative years in the life of Jack Duluoz—Kerouac’s alter ego—beginning with his high school experiences as a sporting jock in small-town New England and his time at Columbia University on a football scholarship. Just as Jack’s glamorous new adult life begins, so does World War II, and he joins the US Navy to travel the world. The more he experiences, the more he realizes the limits of his former plans, and decides to and return to New York, where he collides with the start of the Beat movement and a riot of drugs, sex, and writing. Written in 1967, was Kerouac’s final work published before his death in 1969.