BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Released: March 19, 2012
"Sometimes Steinbeckian in texture and bite, but often tone-deaf, tendentious and surpassingly sad."
A collection of the pro-war pieces filed from Southeast Asia for
Newsday by the Nobel laureate not long before his death.
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FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: Feb. 27, 2002
"We won't argue."
A collection of Steinbeck novels from his last notable period, which ends with his ambitious Salinas Valley epic, East of Eden, published when he was 50.
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Released: Feb. 4, 2002
"More than his familiar, iconic fiction, this collection conveys a real sense of one of our best—and best-loved—writers."
February of next year is the centennial of Steinbeck's birth and, along with new Penguin editions of six of his novels, Viking is offering up this collection from the other, lesser-known, side of his career.
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Released: April 14, 1989
"Admirably compiled and annotated by DeMott, and a must for Steinbeck fans, this is an otherwise modest literary treat."
A pleasant trove of work notes released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of The Grapes of Wrath.
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FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: Oct. 22, 1976
"The present version remains an erratically charming curiosity."
"Jehan Stynebec" maintained a lifelong devotion to the 15th-century minor hoodlum and "knyght presoner, sir Thomas Malleorre," and long cherished the idea of retelling the Matter of Arthur for our time.
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Released: Dec. 20, 1969
"And considering the impact of the late novelist's Joads compared with the forgettable Trasks and Hamiltons, therein might lie a shade of moral."
What amounts to a working journal affixed to the pages of the first draft of East of Eden (1952) in the form of letters addressed to Steinbeck's editor, the late Pascal Covici.
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FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: June 23, 1961
"It is a fascinating and disturbing book, uncomfortably close to the challenge the average man faces in today's materialistic world."
A major novel — the first since East of Eden — this brings into focus a conflict within a man's personality which will have wide, perhaps too wide, recognition value.
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HISTORY
Released: Oct. 17, 1958
"Good journalism, yes, but good literature as well."
Steinbeck's war dispatches were memorable, not perhaps for their historical value as a record but because of the vivid personal angle, the human bits, the vitality of capturing the feel of the war as seen on a troopship, in an airbase in England, behind the lines, and so on.
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FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: June 15, 1957
"But for the most part, the Steinbeck audience will be let down- and others who seek new flavors may not find it sufficiently tart for their taste."
Frankly, I don't know what John Steinbeck was up to in writing this extravaganza, this dubious satire on French politics.
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FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: June 11, 1954
"But meantime- welcome back to Cannery Row."
Perhaps Cannery Row was not top Steinbeck, but I loved it, and the characters live today as vividly as when I first met them in his pages, ten years ago.
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Released: June 15, 1953
"To many who came late to the banquet, here are some they may have missed."
Literary Guild selection for October pinpoints the importance of this republication in a single volume of the shorter novels, including Tortilla Flat.
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FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: Sept. 19, 1952
"But John Steinbeck, the philosopher, dominates his material and brings it into sharply moral focus."
Tremendous in scope- tremendous in depth of penetration- and as different a Steinbeck as the Steinbeck of Burning Bright was from the Steinbeck of Grates of th.
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NATURE & TRAVEL
Released: June 15, 1951
"Ricketts died three years ago and this edition carries a recently written profile tribute by Steinbeck."
This is to announce a re-issue of the beautiful book, originally published in 1941, of an expedition made to the Gulf of California by Ed Ricketts, a biologist, and the novelist.
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Released: April 16, 1948
"The text of the book is about double the text that appeared in syndicated columns, but the deletions were for space not policy."
For a human picture of what life is like in Russia, as reported by a good observer and a perceptive photographer, A Russian Journal will help Americans know the Russians as people like themselves.
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FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: Nov. 24, 1947
"A parable, this, with no attempt to add to its simple pattern."
Steinbeck's peculiarly intense simplicity of technique is admirably displayed in this vignette — a simple, tragic tale of Mexican little people, a story retold by the pearl divers of a fishing hamlet until it has the quality of folk legend.
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FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: Feb. 17, 1946
"Because what he does well, he does so extraordinarily well, it is all the more appalling when he descends to the depths of vulgarity."
FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: Jan. 2, 1944
"And one feels that to him, too, they are part of the flavor of a folk legend of today."
I loved it — and to my mind — it fits admirably an immediate need in our season's lists, — the need for a richly patterned story spun out of another layer of that peculiar underworld with which Steinbeck is at his best.
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BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Released: Nov. 27, 1942
"Not as tight writing as Steinbeck usually does — but good reading."
Call it a propaganda film — made to order for the U. S. Army Air Forces — and sold (for the Aid Society Trust Fund) at a phenomenal figure.
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FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: May 6, 1942
"An extraordinary achievement."
This seems a simple — almost an obvious book — until its overtones and undertones begin to do their deadly work.
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BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Released: Dec. 5, 1941
"Not likely to add to Steinbeck fans, but will pick up plus market on dual appeal."
Steinbeck might be said to have rescued biology from the laboratory and put it on the layman's reading shelf.
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FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: April 14, 1939
"One half of dealer's orders to be filled with firsts."
This is the sort of book that stirs one so deeply that it is almost impossible to attempt to convey the impression it leaves.
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FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: Sept. 19, 1938
"A book for the Steinbeck followers, a growing market, and for anyone who likes short stories at their best."
Any collection of short stories which rates a "Must Book" classification is on the face of it exceptional.
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FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: Feb. 26, 1936
"Steinbeck is a genius and an original."
THRILLERS
Released: Jan. 28, 1936
"A book for those interested in Left Wing literature — and those concerned with new trends."
A far cry from Tortilla Flat, with none of the originality and sardonic humor of that delightful book.
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FICTION & LITERATURE
Released: May 28, 1935
"Some one of the staff should read it, surely."
