Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic remains his undisputed masterpiece.Set against the background of dust bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of the Joad family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel West in search of the promised land. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and broken dreams, yet out of their suffering Steinbeck created a drama that is b...

Seventeen hunter-scholars explore the hunting experience and question common negative stereotypesDespite the academy having a reputation for supporting broad and open inquiry in scholarship, some academics have not extended this open-minded support to colleagues' personal pursuits. A variety of scholars enjoy hunting, which has been stereotyped by some as an activity of the unsophisticated. In Hunting and the Ivory Tower, Douglas Higbee and David Bruzina p...

A road trip through Steinbeck’s America—revisited, reimagined, and reinterpreted.Steinbeck’s Uneasy America is the first collection of critical scholarship devoted to Travels with Charley in Search of America, John Steinbeck’s best-selling, late-career travel memoir. In 1960, Steinbeck was a renowned man of American letters. Many considered him America’s troubadour of ordinary people, the conscience of the country. But weakened by two sma...

Guy de la Valdène’s beautifully written essay (and first book) is an ode to an iconic bird, part natural history, and part hunting memoir. It’s a well-regarded and undisputed classic—an edgy, elegant examination of the habits and history of a reclusive gamebird, the Woodcock, native to Europe and North America, a bird that’s been hunted and celebrated since Roman times. Valdène writes exuberantly of the bird, the hunt, and the feast, gracefully balancing the obsessions of a naturalist, spo...

Conversations with Jim Harrison, Revised and Updated offers a judicious selection of interviews spanning the writing career of Jim Harrison (1937–2016) from its beginnings in the 1960s to the last interview he gave weeks before his death in March 2016. Harrison labeled himself and lived as a “quadra-schizoid” writer. He worked in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and screenwriting, and he published more than forty books that attracted an international following. These interviews supply...

In Steinbeck’s Imaginarium, Robert DeMott delves into the imaginative, creative, and sometimes neglected aspects of John Steinbeck's writing. DeMott positions Steinbeck as a prophetic voice for today as much as he was for the Depression-era 1930s as the essays explore the often unknown or unacknowledged elements of Steinbeck’s artistic career that deserve closer attention. He writes about the determining scientific influences, such as quantum physics and ecology, in Cannery Ro...

While fulfilling his dead father's dream of creating a prosperous farm in California, Joseph Wayne comes to believe that a magnificent tree on the farm embodies his father's spirit. His brothers and their families share in Joseph's prosperity andthe farm flourishes - until one brother, scared by Joseph's pagan belief, kills the tree and brings disease and famine on the farm. Set in familiar Steinbeck country, TO A GOD UNKOWN is a mystical tale, exploring one man's attempt to control thefor...

This marvelous collection features stories from some of America’s finest and most respected writers about every outdoorsman’s favorite and most loyal hunting partner: his dog. For the first time, the stories of acclaimed writers such as Tom Brokaw, Howell Raines, Rick Bass, Sydney Lea, Jim Harrison, Tom McGuane, and Chris Camuto, come together in one collection. Hunters and non-hunters alike will recognize in these poignant tales the universal aspects of owning dogs: companionship, triumph...

[Steinbecks Typewriter: Essays on His Art] collects several of DeMotts finest essays on Steinbeck... [that are] so carefully revised as to warn other critics seeking their own collected essay volume of the difference between a genuinely lapidary compilation and a kitchen midden. Illustrated with some rare photos, this collection is especially notable...John Ditsky, Choice...Steinbecks Typewriter... stands as the most in-depth treatment of Steinbecks aesthetics, particularly ...

The result of a worldwide effort to assess both the current state of critical understanding of John Steinbeck’s works and the extent of his cultural influenceAs a writer who, beginning in the 1930s, illuminated the lives of ordinary people, Steinbeck came to be the conscience of America. He witnessed and recorded with clarity much of the political and social upheaval of the 20th century: The Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and Vietnam. Yet hi...

“From the very first, it seems, fishing was a respite and a therapy along with all of its other potentially redemptive qualities.” —Robert DeMottSpanning more than forty-five years, Angling Days is a collection of Robert DeMott’s numerous journal entries, each a small essay in itself, jotted down during the placid moments of fishing in and along the streams and rivers of North America. Through his journaling, DeMott carries on the angling tradition of chan...

John Steinbeck's powerful evocation of the suffering and hardship caused by the Great Depression, and a panoramic vision of the struggle for the American Dream, The Grapes of Wrath includes a critical introduction by Robert DeMott in Penguin Modern Classics. 'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.' Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer prize-winning epic The Grapes of Wrath remains his undisputed ma...