John Steinbeck Popular Books
John Steinbeck Biography & Facts
John Ernst Steinbeck ( STYNE-bek; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". He has been called "a giant of American letters."During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. By the 75th anniversary of its publishing date, it had sold 14 million copies.Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists. Early life Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. He was of German, English, and Irish descent. Johann Adolf Großsteinbeck (1828–1913), Steinbeck's paternal grandfather, was a founder of Mount Hope, a short-lived messianic farming colony in Palestine that disbanded after Arab attackers killed his brother and raped his brother's wife and mother-in-law. He arrived in the United States in 1858, shortening the family name to Steinbeck. The family farm in Heiligenhaus, Mettmann, Germany, is still named "Großsteinbeck". His father, John Ernst Steinbeck (1862–1935), served as Monterey County treasurer. John's mother, Olive Hamilton (1867–1934), a former school teacher, shared Steinbeck's passion for reading and writing. The Steinbecks were members of the Episcopal Church, although Steinbeck later became agnostic. Steinbeck lived in a small rural valley (no more than a frontier settlement) set in some of the world's most fertile soil, about 25 miles from the Pacific Coast. Both valley and coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction. He spent his summers working on nearby ranches including the Post Ranch in Big Sur. He later labored with migrant workers on Spreckels sugar beet farms. There he learned of the harsher aspects of the migrant life and the darker side of human nature, which supplied him with material expressed in Of Mice and Men. He explored his surroundings, walking across local forests, fields, and farms. While working at Spreckels Sugar Company, he sometimes worked in their laboratory, which gave him time to write. He had considerable mechanical aptitude and fondness for repairing things he owned. Steinbeck graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and went on to study English literature at Stanford University near Palo Alto, leaving without a degree in 1925. He traveled to New York City where he took odd jobs while trying to write. When he failed to publish his work, he returned to California and worked in 1928 as a tour guide and caretaker at Lake Tahoe, where he met Carol Henning, his first wife. They married in January 1930 in Los Angeles, where, with friends, he attempted to make money by manufacturing plaster mannequins.When their money ran out six months later due to a slow market, Steinbeck and Carol moved back to Pacific Grove, California, to a cottage owned by his father, on the Monterey Peninsula a few blocks outside the Monterey city limits. The elder Steinbecks gave John free housing, paper for his manuscripts, and from 1928, loans that allowed him to write without looking for work. During the Great Depression, Steinbeck bought a small boat, and later claimed that he was able to live on the fish and crabs that he gathered from the sea, and fresh vegetables from his garden and local farms. When those sources failed, Steinbeck and his wife accepted welfare, and on rare occasions, stole bacon from the local produce market. Whatever food they had, they shared with their friends. Carol became the model for Mary Talbot in Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row.In 1930, Steinbeck met the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who became a close friend and mentor to Steinbeck during the following decade, teaching him a great deal about philosophy and biology. Ricketts, usually very quiet, yet likable, with an inner self-sufficiency and an encyclopedic knowledge of diverse subjects, became a focus of Steinbeck's attention. Ricketts had taken a college class from Warder Clyde Allee, a biologist and ecological theorist, who would go on to write a classic early textbook on ecology. Ricketts became a proponent of ecological thinking, in which man was only one part of a great chain of being, caught in a web of life too large for him to control or understand. Meanwhile, Ricketts operated a biological lab on the coast of Monterey, selling biological samples of small animals, fish, rays, starfish, turtles, and other marine forms to schools and colleges. Between 1930 and 1936, Steinbeck and Ricketts became close friends. Steinbeck's wife began working at the lab as secretary-bookkeeper. Steinbeck helped on an informal basis. They formed a common bond based on their love of music and art, and John learned biology and Ricketts's ecological philosophy. When Steinbeck became emotionally upset, Ricketts sometimes played music for him. Career Writing Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold, published in 1929, is loosely based on the life and death of privateer Henry Morgan. It centers on Morgan's assault and sacking of Panamá Viejo, sometimes referred to as the "Cup of Gold", and on the women, brighter than the sun, who were said to be found there. In 1930, Steinbeck wrote a werewolf murder mystery, Murder at Full Moon, that has never been published because Steinbeck considered it unworthy of publication.Between 1930 and 1933, Steinbeck produced three shorter works. The Pastures of Heaven, published in 1932, consists of twelve interconnected stories about a valley near Monterey, which was discovered by a Spanish corporal while chasing runaway Indian slaves. In 1933 Steinbeck published The Red Pony, a 100-page, four-chapter story weaving in memories of Steinbeck's childhood. To a God Unknown, named after a Vedic hymn, follows the life of a homesteader and his family in California, depicting a character with a primal and pagan worship of the land he works. Before his novel Tortilla Flat (1935), Steinbeck was an obscure writer "with little success". Although he had not achieved the status of a well-known writer, he never doubted that he would achieve greatness.Steinbeck achieved his first critical success with Tortilla Flat, a novel set in post-war Monterey, California, that won the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal. It portrays the adventures of a group of classless and usually homeless young men in Monterey after.... Discover the John Steinbeck popular books. Find the top 100 most popular John Steinbeck books.
Best Seller John Steinbeck Books of 2024
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Human Happiness
Blaise PascalCreated by the seventeenthcentury philosopher and mathematician Pascal, the essays contained in Human Happiness are a curiously optimistic look at whether humans can ever find sati...
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John Steinbeck
Patrick RafroidiCet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.
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The Lake Wobegon Virus
Garrison KeillorBestselling author and humorist Garrison Keillor returns to one of America's most beloved mythical towns, beset by a contagion of alarming candor. A mysterious virus has infiltrate...
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The Winter of Our Discontent
John Steinbeck & Susan ShillinglawThe final novel of one of America’s most beloved writersa tale of degeneration, corruption, and spiritual crisisA Penguin Classic In awarding John Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize in...
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Funny Business
Michael Hill“A delightful and entertaining book about one of America’s greatest humorists.”Seth Meyers This “absorbing, illuminating” (Jon Meacham) biography of the legendary politic...
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Capital
Karl Marx & David FernbachUnfinished at the time of Marx's death in 1883 and first published with a preface by Frederick Engels in 1894, the third volume of Das Kapital strove to combine the theories and co...
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The Grapes of Wrath
John SteinbeckThe Pulitzer Prizewinning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanizedand sometimes outragedmillions of readers. First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prizewinning...
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Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell'My dear, I don't give a damn.'Margaret Mitchell’s pageturning, sweeping American epic has been a classic for over eighty years. Beloved and thought by many to be the greatest of t...
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The Vinland Sagas
Hermann Palsson & Magnus MagnussonOne of the most arresting stories in the history of exploration, these two Icelandic sagas tell of the discovery of America by Norsemen five centuries before Christopher Columbus. ...
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Germinal
Roger Pearson & Émile ZolaConsidered by André Gide to be one of the ten greatest novels in the French language, Émile Zola's Germinal is a brutal depiction of the poverty of a mining community in northern F...
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John Steinbeck
Linda Wagner-MartinThis book aims to both describe and analyze the way Steinbeck learned the writing craft. It begins with his immersion in the short story, some years after he stopped...
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Silas Marner
George Eliot & David CarrollWrongly accused of theft and exiled from a religious community many years before, the embittered weaver Silas Marner lives alone in Raveloe, living only for work and his precious h...
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To a God Unknown
John Steinbeck & Robert DeMottA Penguin ClassicAncient pagan beliefs, the great Greek epics, and the Bible all inform this extraordinary novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck, which occupied him for more t...
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Lives and Letters
Robert GottliebThe product of a lifetime immersed in the literary, performing arts, and entertainment worlds, Lives and Letters spotlights the work, careers, intimate lives, and lasting achieveme...
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The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
Angela CarterDesiderio, an employee of the city under a bizarre reality attack from Doctor Hoffman's mysterious machines, has fallen in love with Albertina, the Doctor's daughter. But Albertina...
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The Pot of Gold and Other Plays
PlautusOne of the supreme comic writers of the Roman world, Plautus (c.254184 BC), skilfully adapted classic Greek comic models to the manners and customs of his day. This collection feat...
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John Steinbeck
Tetsumaro HayashiThis volume is derived from papers presented by the North American delegates at the Third International Steinbeck Congress, held in May 1990 in Honolulu, Hawaii, under the cosponso...
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Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange
Malcolm Lyons & AnonymousOn the shrouded corpse hung a tablet of green topaz with the inscription: 'I am Shaddad the Great. I conquered a thousand cities; a thousand white elephants were collected for me; ...
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Voices in Our Blood
Jon Meacham, Maya Angelou, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker & James BaldwinA literary anthology of important and artful interpretations of the civil rights movement and the fight against white supremacy, past and presentincluding pieces by Maya Angel...
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Tortilla Flat
John SteinbeckAdopting the structure and themes of the Arthurian legend, John Steinbeck created a “Camelot” on a shabby hillside above the town of Monterey, California, and peopled it with a col...
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Hard Times
Charles Dickens'Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else'Dickens's novel honouring the value of the human hea...
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Cup of Gold
John Steinbeck & Susan F. BeegelSteinbeck’s first novel and sole work of historical fictionthe violent, exciting story of the infamous pirate Henry MorganA Penguin ClassicFrom the mid1650s through the 1660s, Henr...
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John Steinbeck
Keith FerrellJohn Steinbeck was a writer who continually struggled to awaken America’s social conscience, and this riveting biography for young readers illustrates both his triumphs and hardshi...
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The Moon Is Down
John Steinbeck & Donald V. CoersOccupied by enemy troops, a small, peaceable town comes facetoface with evil imposed from the outsideand betrayal born within the closeknit communityA Penguin Classic In this maste...
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Choice Cuts
Mark Kurlansky“Every once in awhile a writer of particular skills takes a fresh, seemingly improbable idea and turns out a book of pure delight.” That’s how David McCullough described Mark Kurla...
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The Pearl
John Steinbeck, Linda Wagner-Martin & Jose Clemente Orozco“There it lay, the great pearl, perfect as the moon.” Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the gulf beds that once brought...
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Journal of a Novel
John SteinbeckEach working day from January 29 to November 1, 1951, John Steinbeck warmed up to the work of writing East of Eden with a letter to the late Pascal Covici, his friend and editor at...
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The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck & Robert DeMottThe Pulitzer Prizewinning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanizedand sometimes outragedmillions of readers.First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prizewinning e...
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Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck & Susan ShillinglawA controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great DepressionA Penguin Classic Over seventyfive years since its first publication, Steinbeck’s tale of commitment, lone...
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Travels with Charley in Search of America
John Steinbeck & Jay PariniAn intimate journey across and in search of America, as told by one of its most beloved writers, in a deluxe centennial edition In September 1960, John Steinbeck embarked on a jour...
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The Short Novels of John Steinbeck
John SteinbeckA Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Steinbeck's brilliant short novelsCollected here for the first time in a deluxe paperback volume are six of John Steinbeck's most widely read a...
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Death Gone A-Rye
Winnie ArcherIn the Northern California seaside town of Santa Sofia, a killer is trying to get a rise out of baker’s apprentice Ivy Culpepper . . . Vincent van Dough focaccia is being tou...
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John Steinbeck
Robert B. HarmonHarmon brings together information on biographical works about Steinbeck in a single, wellorganized source, providing both bibliographic and anecdotal information. The materials co...
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East of Eden
John SteinbeckA masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America’s most enduring authors, in a commemorative hardcover edition In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John St...
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The Lusiads
Luís Vaz de Camões & William AtkinsonFirst published in 1572, The Lusiads is one of the greatest epic poems of the Renaissance, immortalizing Portugal's voyages of discovery with an unrivalled freshness of observation...
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Tortilla Flat
John Steinbeck & Thomas FenschAdopting the structure and themes of the Arthurian legend, John Steinbeck created a “Camelot” on a shabby hillside above the town of Monterey, California, and peopled it with a col...
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My Life With John Steinbeck
Gwyn Conger SteinbeckFor the first time,the story of John Steinbecks forgotten second wife, unmentioned in standard editions of his classics, such as The Grapes of Wrath. Their 1943 wartime marriage en...
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The Red Pony
John Steinbeck & John SeelyeRaised on a ranch in northern California, Jody is wellschooled in the hard work and demands of a rancher's life. He is used to the way of horses, too; but nothing has prepared him ...
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John Steinbeck
Shmoop"Dive deep into the story of John Steinbeck's life anywhere you go: on a plane, on a mountain, in a canoe, under a tree. Or grab a flashlight and read Shmoop under the covers. Shmo...
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Cannery Row
John SteinbeckSteinbeck's tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society, dependant on one another for both physical and emotional survival Published in 1945, Cannery Row focuse...
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America Is in the Heart
Carlos Bulosan, E. San Juan Jr. & Jeffrey Arellano CabusaoA 1946 Filipino American social classic about the United States in the 1930s from the perspective of a Filipino migrant laborer who endures racial violence and struggles with the p...
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John Steinbeck
Fernanda Rossini"Steinbeck concentra le sue convinzioni sull’arte dello scrivere, sulle capacità creative individuali e sulle responsabilità personali in un’epoca di profondo cambiamento e di impo...
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The Portable Steinbeck
John Steinbeck, Pascal Covici & Susan ShillinglawA selection of essential writings by one of the greatest writers in American historyIt would be impossible to overstate John Steinbeck's enduring influence on American letters. Pro...
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In Dubious Battle
John Steinbeck & Warren FrenchA riveting novel of labor strife and apocalyptic violence, now a major motion picture starring James Franco, Bryan Cranston, Selena Gomez, and Zach BraffA Penguin ClassicAt once a ...