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.

傑剋·凱魯亞剋（Jack Kerouac，1922-1969），一九二二年三月十二日，凱魯亞剋齣生於馬薩諸塞州洛厄爾，父母為法裔美國人，他是傢中幼子。他曾在當地天主教和公立學校就讀，以橄欖球奬學金入紐約哥倫比亞大學，結識愛倫·金斯堡、威廉·巴勒斯和尼爾·卡薩迪等“垮掉的一代”。

凱魯亞剋大學二年級退學從事文學創作，並輾轉於美國海軍和商用航運公司等處。一九五○年，第一部小說《鄉鎮和城市》齣版。一九五七年的《在路上》問世後，他成為“垮掉的一代”的代言人，躋身二十世紀最有爭議的著名作傢行列。他還著有《達摩流浪者》、《地下人》、《孤獨的旅人》和《孤獨天使》等作品。

一九六九年十月二十一日，凱魯亞剋在佛羅裏達聖彼得堡去世，享年四十七歲。