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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5203
EAN: 9780142000700
ISBN: 0142000701
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 224
Publication Date: 2002-02-05
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. Over the next year, his many works published as black-spine Penguin Classics for the first time and will feature eye-catching, newly commissioned art.

Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers—and to the many who revisit them again and again.

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Love for your country
Review: In this book, John Steinbeck shows patriotism at its best. He travels through the United States, and experiences all the beauties of this nation in a marvellous way. He shows no arrogance as he appreciates his homeland. Instead, he shows this nation's beauty and riches in an amicable way, and invites others to travel and experience the beauty of this nation. The hymn "America The Beautiful" comes to the reader's mind.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: "I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger."
Review: (4.5 stars) When John Steinbeck obeys a life-long urge to drive from coast to coast in 1960, he little anticipates the variety of the "American experience." Beginning in Maine and traveling along the northern states through Wisconsin, the Badlands, Montana, and all places in between, to Washington and Oregon, Steinbeck then decides to visit his childhood community of Salinas, in northern California. After meeting with friends there, though many have died, he then drives southward through the length of California and then eastward through the southwest desert to Texas, Louisiana, and eventually up to Virginia before returning to New York.

Carrying the reader along with him as he reconstructs this journey for publication in 1962, Steinbeck observes people and human nature, being careful not to draw conclusions about an entire area based on the individuals he meets along the way. Often it is their reactions to Charley, his aging standard poodle, which stimulates their conversations and allows Steinbeck glimpses of their thinking and ways of life. From the terminally gloomy waitress in Maine to the evil-looking mechanic in Oregon (who turns out to be the kindest and most generous of men), Steinbeck explores attitudes toward life (and strangers). Steinbeck's high school buddy (who almost comes to blows with him) shows him that you really can't go home again, and "the cheerleaders" of New Orleans, a group of white-supremacist women who taunt and scream obscenities at a tiny black girl integrating one of their schools, shows him how much work the human race still has left to do.

As he travels in his truck with a house attached to its bed (a pre-camper invention), he notes the changing landscape, the disappearance of treasured aspects of the environment, and the growth of new trends--including the increasing popularity of the mobile home and the contemporary loss of "roots." He is genuinely frightened by the Badlands, until night falls, when it becomes beautiful. He adores Montana, and he hurries through the almost blank southwestern desert where he learns something new about shooting. Though Steinbeck gets tired of travel before the end of the trip, he still manages to record signal moments which resonate with the reader.

What elevates this book especially is the glimpses it gives of Steinbeck himself, a far more upbeat man than one would expect from novels like Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, and Grapes of Wrath. His observations of life in the early 1960s capture the country at pivotal moments of history--the time of Sen. John Kennedy and freedom rides. In this respect, Steinbeck creates a time capsule for future generations and a picture of himself that lovers of his writing will treasure. n Mary Whipple

Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck Centennial Edition)
John Steinbeck, Writer: A Biography

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: One of the Best Travel Books Ever Written
Review: I just finished the book and it was a fantastic read. It was a fairly "light" book, considering the author; it was genuinely hilarious at times, and, as always, Steinbeck created an incredibly vivid, personal, and accurate portrait of the relationships between nature and society. Shades of his earlier can be seen in the prose style, and his unconditional devotion to the creation and development of images and characters can't be matched by anyone from any time.

As far as a "Travel-style" novel is concerned, I think I liked this one more than Kerouac's On the Road...but, then again, Steinbeck was far more talented than any of the Beats -except Ginsberg (who might've been in his league, but in a junior-varsity-type capacity) and maybe Neal Cassidy.

If you like Steinbeck, you will really enjoy reading this book.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: delightful classic steinbeck
Review: traveling across america in 1960 with a man and his dog. awww, for the wanderlust in all of us and too live it via john steinbeck. each turn more exciting than the other......yet was 3 months enough time? i think not!

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Travels With Charley
Review: A wonderful read..a glimpse of America through the eyes of Steinbeck while driving his pick-up/camper with his dog.

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