Authors > John Steinbeck

Featured Titles:

The Grapes of Wrath

The story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads--driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.

Year: 1939     Genre:

The Pearl

When the news of Kino's great find -- the "Pearl of the World" -- spreads through the small town, no one suspects its power to deceive, to corrupt, to destroy. Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the Gulf beds that once brought great wealth to the Kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their infant son with meager subsistence.

Year: 1947     Genre: Literature

East of Eden

The masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years -- a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis. Set in 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.

Year: 1952     Genre: Family Saga

Travels with Charley

In September 1960, John Steinbeck embarked on a journey across America. He felt that he might have lost touch with the country, with its speech, the smell of its grass and trees, its color and quality of light, the pulse of its people. To reassure himself, he set out on a voyage of rediscovery of the American identity, accompanied by a distinguished French poodle named Charley; and riding in a three-quarter-ton pickup truck named Rocinante.

Year: 1962     Genre: Travel