A deluxe edition of Kerouacas masterpiece on the 50th anniversary of its first publication First published in 1958, a year after "On the Road" had put the Beat generation on the map, "The Dharma Bums" stands as one of Jack Kerouacas most powerful, influential, and bestselling novels. The story focuses on two untrammeled young Americansamountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writerawhose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Franciscoas Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras to Rayas sixty-day vigil by himself atop Desolation Peak in Washington State. Primary to this evocative and soulful novel is an honest, exuberant search for an affirmative way of life in the midst of the atomic age. In many ways, "The Dharma Bums" also presaged the environmental, back-to-the-land, and American Buddhist movements of the 1960s and beyond.

杰克·凯鲁亚克（Jack Kerouac，1922-1969），一九二二年三月十二日，凯鲁亚克出生于马萨诸塞州洛厄尔，父母为法裔美国人，他是家中幼子。他曾在当地天主教和公立学校就读，以橄榄球奖学金入纽约哥伦比亚大学，结识爱伦·金斯堡、威廉·巴勒斯和尼尔·卡萨迪等“垮掉的一代”。

凯鲁亚克大学二年级退学从事文学创作，并辗转于美国海军和商用航运公司等处。一九五○年，第一部小说《乡镇和城市》出版。一九五七年的《在路上》问世后，他成为“垮掉的一代”的代言人，跻身二十世纪最有争议的著名作家行列。他还著有《达摩流浪者》、《地下人》、《孤独的旅人》和《孤独天使》等作品。

一九六九年十月二十一日，凯鲁亚克在佛罗里达圣彼得堡去世，享年四十七岁。