John Steinbeck

In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

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...

This exciting day-by-day account of Steinbeck's trip to the Gulf of California with biologist Ed Ricketts, drawn from the longer Sea of Cortez, is a wonderful combination of science, philosophy, and high-spirited adventure. Annotation. In 1940, Steinbeck and his friend, biologist Ed Ricketts, ventured into the Gulf of California to search for marine invertebrates along the beaches. This exciting, day-by-day account of their trip, drawn from the longer...