Most Popular Books by John Steinbeck

Nuova traduzione integrale di Sergio Claudio Perroni. Pietra miliare della letteratura americana, Furore è un romanzo mitico che nell’odissea della famiglia Joad, sfrattata dalla sua casa e dalla sua terra, in penosa marcia verso la California, lungo la Route 66 come migliaia e migliaia di americani, rivive la trasformazione di un’intera nazione. L’impatto amaro con la terra promessa dove la manodopera è sfruttata e mal pagata, dove ciascuno porta con sé la propria miseria “come un marchio d’infamia”. Insieme romanzo di viaggio e ritratto epico della lotta dell’uomo contro l’ingiustizia, Furore è forse il più americano dei classici americani, da leggere oggi nella traduzione basata sul testo inglese della Centennial Edition dell’opera di Steinbeck, che restituisce ai lettori la forza e la modernità della scrittura del Premio Nobel per la Letteratura 1962.

Here are seven articles written by John Steinbeck in 1936 as he toured squatters camps and Hoovervilles in California''s migrant labor region, led by his friend Tom Collins, manager of a federal migrant labor camp. Steinbeck''s personal and literary response led him to dedicate the novel "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939) in part to Tom.

Steinbeck''s only work of fantasy literature—in a deluxe edition with a foreword by Christopher Paolini, New York Times bestselling author of Eragon, Eldest and Brisingr A Penguin Classic Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur was the first book that John Steinbeck truly enjoyed reading as a child. Fascinated by Arthurian tales of adventure, knighthood, honor and friendship, in addition to the challenging nuances of the original Anglo-Saxon language, Steinbeck set out to render these stories faithfully and with keen animation for a modern audience. Here then is Steinbeck’s modernization of the adventure of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, featuring the icons of Arthurian legend—including King Arthur, Merlin, Morgan le Fay, the incomparable Queen Guinevere, and Arthur''s purest knight, Sir Lancelot of the Lake. These enduring tales of loyalty and betrayal in the time of Camelot flicker with the wonder and magic of an era past but not forgotten. Steinbeck''s retelling will capture the attention and imagination of legions of Steinbeck fans, including those who love Arthurian romances, as well as countless readers of science fiction and fantasy literature. This edition features a new foreword by Christopher Paolini, author of the number-one New York Times bestselling novels Eragon, Eldest, and Brisingr. It also includes the letters John Steinbeck wrote to his literary agent, Elizabeth Otis, and to Chase Horton, the original editor of this volume. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of Americas greatest writers and cultural figures. Over the next year, his many works, beginning with the six shown here, will be published as black-spine Penguin Classics for the first time and will feature eye-catching, newly commissioned art. Of this initial group of six titles, "The Wayward Bus" is in a new edition. An imaginative and unsentimental chronicle of a bus traveling Californias back roads. This allegorical novel of pilgrimage includes a new introduction by Gary Scharnhorst. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readersand to the many who revisit them again and again.

A magnificent volume of short novels and an essential World War II report from one of America''s great twentieth-century writers On the heels of the enormous success of his masterwork The Grapes of Wrath and at the height of the American war effort John Steinbeck, one of the most prolific and influential literary figures of his generation, wrote Bombs Away, a nonfiction account of his experiences with U.S. Army Air Force bomber crews during World War II. Now, for the first time since its original publication in 1942, Penguin Classics presents this exclusive edition of Steinbeck''s introduction to the then-nascent U.S. Army Air Force and its bomber crew--the essential core unit behind American air power that Steinbeck described as "the greatest team in the world." For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Summary of the book Of Mice and Men is a novella written by John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it narrates the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States.

Travels with Charley: In Search of America is a 1962 travelogue written by American author John Steinbeck. It depicts a 1960 road trip around the United States made by Steinbeck, in the company of his standard poodle Charley. Steinbeck wrote that he was moved by a desire to see his country on a personal level because he made his living writing about it. He wrote of having many questions going into his journey, the main one being "What are Americans like today?" However, he found that he had concerns about much of the "new America" he witnessed. Steinbeck tells of traveling throughout the United States in a specially made camper he named Rocinante, after Don Quixote''s horse. His travels start in Long Island, New York, and roughly follow the outer border of the United States, from Maine to the Pacific Northwest, down into his native Salinas Valley in California across to Texas, through the Deep South, and then back to New York. Such a trip encompassed nearly 10,000 miles. According to Thom Steinbeck, the author''s oldest son, the reason for the trip was that Steinbeck knew he was dying and wanted to see his country one last time. The younger Steinbeck has said he was surprised that his stepmother allowed his father to make the trip; his heart condition meant he could have died at any time. Part One Steinbeck opened the book by describing his lifelong wanderlust and his preparations to rediscover the country he felt he had lost touch with after living in New York City and traveling in Europe for 20 years. He was 58 years old in 1960 and nearing the end of his career, but he felt that when he was writing about America and its people he "was writing of something [he] did not know about, and it seemed to [him] that in a so-called writer this is criminal" (p. 6). He bought a new GMC pickup truck, which he named Rocinante, and had it fitted with a custom camper-shell for his journey. At the last minute, he decided to take his wife''s 10-year-old French Poodle Charley, with whom he has many mental conversations as a device for exploring his thoughts. He planned on leaving after Labor Day from his summer home in Sag Harbor on the eastern end of Long Island, but his trip was delayed about two weeks due to Hurricane Donna, which made a direct hit on Long Island. Steinbeck''s exploits in saving his boat during the middle of the hurricane, which he details, foreshadow his fearless, or even reckless, state of mind and his courage in undertaking a long, arduous and ambitious cross-country road trip by himself. Part Two Steinbeck began his trip by traveling by ferry from Long Island to Connecticut, passing the U.S. Navy submarine base at New London where many of the new nuclear submarines were stationed. He talked to a sailor stationed on a sub who enjoyed being on them because "they offer all kinds of - future". Steinbeck credited uncertainty about the future to rapid technological and political changes. He mentioned the wastefulness of American cities and society and lamented the large amount of waste that resulted from everything being "packaged." Later he had a conversation with a New England farmer. The two concluded that a combination of fear and uncertainty about the future limited their discussion of the coming election between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Steinbeck enjoyed learning about people by eating breakfast in roadside restaurants and listening to morning radio programs, though he noted that, "If ''Teen-Age Angel'' [sic] is top of the list in Maine, it is the top of the list in Montana" (35), showing the ubiquity of pop culture brought on by Top 40 radio and mass media technologies.

John Steinbeck''s novel The Grapes of Wrath tells the specific story of the Joad family, and thus illustrates the hardships and oppression suffered by migrant laborers during the Great Depression. It is an explicitly political piece of writing, one that champions collective action by the lower classes. In taking this social stance, Steinbeck''s novel criticizes shortsighted self-interest and chastises corporate and banking elites for profit-maximizing policies that ultimately forced farmers into destitution and even starvation. The novel begins with a description of the conditions in Dust Bowl Oklahoma that ruined crops and instigated massive foreclosures on farmland. No specific characters emerge initially; this is a technique that Steinbeck will employ several times in the book, posing descriptions of events in a large social context against descriptions of events more particular to the Joad family. Tom Joad, a man not yet thirty, approaches a diner dressed in spotless, somewhat formal clothing. He hitches a ride with a truck driver, who presses Tom for information until Tom finally reveals that he was just released from McAlester prison, where he served four years for murdering a man during a fight. Steinbeck follows this exchange with an interlude describing a turtle crossing the road, which serves as a metaphor for the struggles of the working class.

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is an English-language book written by American author John Steinbeck and published in 1951. It details a six-week (March 11 - April 20) marine specimen-collecting boat expedition he made in 1940 at various sites in the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez), with his friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts. It is regarded as one of Steinbeck''s most important works of non-fiction chiefly because of the involvement of Ricketts, who shaped Steinbeck''s thinking and provided the prototype for many of the pivotal characters in his fiction, and the insights it gives into the philosophies of the two men. The Log from the Sea of Cortez is the narrative portion of an earlier work, Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research, which was published by Steinbeck and Ricketts shortly after their return from the Gulf of California, and combined the journals of the collecting expedition, reworked by Steinbeck, with Ricketts'' species catalogue. After Ricketts'' death in 1948, Steinbeck dropped the species catalogue from the earlier work and republished it with a eulogy to his friend added as a foreword.

The Moon Is Down is a novel by American writer John Steinbeck. Fashioned for adaptation for the theatre and for which Steinbeck received the Norwegian King Haakon VII Freedom Cross, it was published by Viking Press in March 1942. The story tells of the military occupation of a small town in Northern Europe by the army of an unnamed nation at war with England and Russia (much like the occupation of Norway by the Germans during World War II). Taken by surprise, a small coastal town is overrun by an invading army with little resistance. The town is important because it is a port that serves a large coal mine. Colonel Lanser, the head of the invading battalion, along with his staff establishes their headquarters in the house of Orden, the democratically elected and popular mayor. As the reality of occupation sinks in and the weather turns bleak, with the snows beginning earlier than usual, the "simple, peaceful people" of the town are angry and confused. Colonel Lanser, a veteran of many wars, tries to operate under a veil of civility and law, but in his heart he knows that "there are no peaceful people" amongst those whose freedom has been taken away by force. The calm is soon torn apart when Alexander Morden, an erstwhile alderman and "a free man", is ordered to work in the mine. He strikes out at Captain Loft with a pickaxe, but Captain Bentick steps into its path and dies of it. After a trial, Morden is executed by a firing squad. This incident catalyzes the people of the town and they settle into "a slow, silent, waiting revenge." Sections of the railroad linking the port with the mine get damaged regularly, the machinery breaks down often, and the dynamo of the electricity generators gets short circuited. Whenever a soldier relaxes his guard, drinks or goes out with a woman, he is killed. Mayor Orden stands by his people, and tries to explain to Col. Lanser that his goal - "to break man''s spirit permanently" - is impossible. The cold weather and the constant fear weighs heavy on the occupying force, many of whom wish the war to end so that they can return home. They realize the futility of the war and that "the flies have conquered the flypaper." Some members of the resistance escape to England and ask the English for explosives so that the townspeople can intensify their efforts. English planes parachute-drop small packages containing dynamite sticks and chocolates all around the town. In a state of panic, Colonel Lanser''s army takes the mayor and his friend Dr. Winter, the town doctor and historian, hostage and lets it be known that any guerilla action will lead to their execution. Mayor Orden refuses to ask his people to stop active resistance, and feels that nothing can stop his people and that his death is imminent. He tells his wife that while he can be killed, the idea of mayor (and freedom and democracy) is beyond the reach of any army. Before his execution, Mayor Orden reminds Dr. Winter of the dialogues of Socrates in the Apology and Phaedo, a part he played in a high school play, and tells him to make sure that the debt is repaid to the army, i.e., that resistance continues.