“Iron Heel” is a very unusual and fascinating dystopia novel dedicated to the nearest (at the time of publication in 1908) future of the United States and the planet Earth as a whole. Like none of the masters of the dystopian (and utopian) genre, London failed to accurately predict the future. However, much of what he wrote in the novel came true - and giant corporations that absorb small and medium-sized businesses, and the very idea of "corporate culture", and world wars with Germany, and even ... 1917 as the date of a powerful social explosion. "People of the Abyss" - a collection of essays on the tragic life of the London poor, for the sake of which the author, with his noble adventurism, changed into a sailor behind the ship and lived among his future characters for several months, sharing poverty and adversity with them. Before the reader there is a whole gallery of the inhabitants of this hell on earth downcast and unhappy or strong, purposeful and ready to fight for existence.