Thirty-five years ago, when "searching for America" was not yet the cliche it has since become, Steinbeck hit the highways with his French poodle, Charley. In a custom-built camper he named Rosinante after Don Quixote's steed, the two traveled the country--10,000 miles and 34 states. Their varied experiences comprise several slices of small-town, back-roads Americana. Steinbeck laments the rise of plastic-covered everything, the vacuousness of "sad...

John Steinbeck's classic novel about an Oklahoma farm family driven from their home and forced to travel to California during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"Describes the life and works of author John Steinbeck"--

John Steinbeck's novels, including The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, have been read by students around the world, and they often provide a strong starting point for learning about the devastating effects of the Great Depression. This connection between history and literature is waiting for readers to discover as they take in the fascinating details of Steinbeck's life and closely examine one of his most famous works, Of Mice and Men.

In Depression-era California, two migrant workers dream of better days on a spread of their own until an act of unintentional violence leads to tragic consequences.

A grand sampling of this writer's most important works. Here are the complete novels Of Mice and Men and The Red Pony, together with self-contained excerpts from The Long Valley, Tortilla Flat, In Dubious Battle (celebrated as "America's best strike novel"), The Grapes of Wrath, his epic of the Okie migration of the Great Depression, Cannery Row, East of Eden, Travels with Charley, and other books; two previously uncollected short stories; and the...

A biography of the California-born author whose many works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

The migration of the Joad family to California from their dust-bowl farm in Oklahoma during the Great Depression.