John Steinbeck

Where's Tom Joad Anyway?

Craig Werner | Posted 04.25.2012

Read More: Robert Putnam, The Ghost of Tom Joad, John Steinbeck, Social Capital, The Grapes of Wrath, Individualism, Bruce Springsteen, College News
Craig Werner

This idea that the American Dream involves making as much cash as possible for yourself is well out of date, and the time has come for a change.

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Novelists Who Were More Enlightened Than Their Era

Dave Astor | Posted 04.19.2012

Read More: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Women, Stereotypes, John Steinbeck, Wilkie Collins, Novels, Asian Americans, Racism, Alexandre Dumas, Anti-Racism, Biracial, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, African Americans, Books News
Dave Astor

The 1800s were of course a time of blatant racism, and many authors reflected that by depicting fictional characters of color in horribly stereotyped ways. Or they omitted those characters entirely, as if the world was populated by whites only.

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You Can't Fix Stupid

George Heymont | Posted 04.16.2012

Read More: Carlisle Floyd, John Steinbeck, AJ Meijer, Theatreworks, Chad Deverman, Anthony Dean Griffey, Charles Branklyn, Lena Hart, Opera Australia, Jos Viramontes, Gary Martinez, Of Mice and Men, Video, Arts News
George Heymont

One of the most memorable characters in American literature is stupid in the oldest and truest sense of the word. Although he appears to be warm, human, and inhabits the body of a man, his mind and personality never progressed past childhood.

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First Nighter: Encores! Series' Pipe Dream Almost a Dream Come True

David Finkle | Posted 05.29.2012

Read More: Will Chase, "The Sound of Music, Stephen Wallem, John Steinbeck, Laura Osnes, "Pipe Dream, Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, " Mark Bruni, California, " "Sweet Thursday, " City Center Encores! Series, "Cannery Row, Monterey, Tom Wopat, Rob Berman, World War II, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Leslie Uggams, " Carnegie Hall, Entertainment News
David Finkle

Of course, when songs so ebullient and/or passionate are this good, who's going to complain? Although a number of the Encores! dust-offs have moved to Broadway, this one certainly won't. Never mind, since it has enough going for it right where it is.

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The Undergraduate Visitor to the Harry Ransom Center

Elana Estrin | Posted 05.27.2012

Read More: University, John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Samuel Beckett, Anne Sexton, UT Austin, Undergraduates, Undergraduate Education, Harry Ransom, Harry Ransom Center, Universities, Robert De Niro, The University of Texas at Austin, Video, Education News
Elana Estrin

Since its founding, the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, has been an important re...

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Springsteen, Glenn Beck and Tom Joad

Craig Werner | Posted 05.23.2012

Read More: Glenn Beck, Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, Bruce Springsteen, College News
Craig Werner

With "Born in the U.S.A." Springsteen is entering into a dialogue with the American public, asking them about Vietnam, "Is this what you want our country to be associated with? Is this really the America we live in? Can we do better?"

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John Steinbeck's Letter From Vietnam

Posted 03.21.2012

Read More: Steinbeck Letters, Book News, Steinbeck Vietnam Letters, John Steinbeck, Vietnam Letters, Steinbeck, Steinbeck Book, War Letters, Steinbeck War Latters, Steinbeck Vietnam, Steinbeck Writing, Books News

Madeleine Crum, The Huffington Post: Though John Steinbeck is best known for chronicling the woes of The Great Depression, his raw, journalistic acco...

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PHOTOS: How Kodachrome Changed Our View Of America

Eric Sandweiss | Posted 05.16.2012

Read More: Slidewide, Photos, Charles Cushman, Kodachrome Photos, Oup, Kodachrome, John Steinbeck, The Day in Its Color, Books News
Eric Sandweiss

Scientists had experimented with the possibility of showing the world in color since even before the late 1800s, but it was the invention known as Kodachrome that delivered "the colors the human eye perceives" not just to obsessive eccentrics but to housewives, Boy Scouts and Rotarians.

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Expecting Presidents

Christopher Holshek | Posted 04.23.2012

Read More: Citizenship, Elections 2012, Presidents Day, John Steinbeck, Values, Presidents, President Obama, Books News
Christopher Holshek

Whether Barack Obama is re-elected or replaced is overwhelmingly hinged on jobs and the economy. There's more than this to being president.

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The New Walter Cronkite?

Posted 02.06.2012

Read More: Msnbc, John Steinbeck, The Rachel Maddow Show, Rachel Maddow, Rachel Maddow John Steinbeck Award, Center for Steinbeck Studies, Msnbc Rachel Maddow Show, John Steinbeck Award, Rachel Maddow MSNBC, Media News

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow was announced the winner of the prestigious John Steinbeck Award on Monday. In addition to being honored with the award, Maddow ...

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Serious Novelists Are Sometimes Surprisingly Funny

Dave Astor | Posted 03.06.2012

Read More: John Steinbeck, Jane Austen, Terry McMillan, Humor in Novels, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Philip Roth, Books News
Dave Astor

Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is an epic tragedy that leaves readers shocked and awed. But, along the way, there are some delightfully funny interludes -- most notably the pre-voyage scene in which Ishmael and Queequeg end up in the same bedroom.

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Giving Thanks for Putting Away Childish Literary Things

Dave Astor | Posted 01.25.2012

Read More: Books for Adults, Jane Eyre, John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Juvenile Fiction, Charlotte Bronte, Children's Books, Books News
Dave Astor

As I write this on Thanksgiving weekend, I give thanks to the books that turn adolescent readers into adult readers. For me, it was one 19th-century novel by a woman, and one 20th-century novel by a man.

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Anna Bahr

SLIDESHOW: Etsy Artist Paints Colbert, Fey, Angelou, Other Inspring People For Charity

HuffingtonPost.com | Anna Bahr | Posted 11.19.2011

Read More: Etsy, Education, Poverty, John Steinbeck, Donate, Homelessness, Good Works, Charity, Modest Needs, Arts, Nina Simone, Maya Angelou, Impact News

Last April, artist Ryan Wollard was fed up. Programs for the arts and teaching programs were being cut left and right, and labor unions were under att...

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The Pleasures of Rereading

Dave Astor | Posted 11.19.2011

Read More: J.K. Rowling, John Steinbeck, Baseball, L.M. Montgomery, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Zora Neale Hurston, Rereading Books, Herman Melville, Charlotte Bronte, Rereading Novels, Alfred Payson Terhune, Alexandre Dumas, J.R.R. Tolkien, Marseille, Morality, Harry Potter, Mark Twain, Nostalgia, Dogs, Books News
Dave Astor

Reading a beloved book twice, thrice, or more is a craving that can't be denied. It's pleasurable, comforting, and relaxing -- partly because you don't have to figure out what the author is doing from scratch.

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The Most Novels You've Read By an Author

Dave Astor | Posted 11.14.2011

Read More: J.K. Rowling, Barbara Kingsolver, John Steinbeck, Colette, Harper Lee, Ralph Ellison, L.M. Montgomery, Charles Dickens, Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, Herman Melville, Erich Maria Remarque, Emile Zola, Alexandre Dumas, Walter Scott, Willa Cather, Mark Twain, Cormac McCarthy, Jack London, Books News
Dave Astor

My list includes the authors' names, the number of novels I've read by each of them, and my three favorite novels (in rank order) by each of them. If you have different favorites by those authors, I'd like to hear about that.

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What Joan Rivers and Marcel Proust Doodled on Their Mail

Elana Estrin | Posted 11.01.2011

Read More: Muhammad Ali, Marcel Proust, Irving Hoffman, Carlton Lake, John Steinbeck, Morris Ernst, Reynaldo Hahn, Joan Rivers, A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, Gertrude Stein, Elizabeth Garver, Coen Brothers, David Mamet, Norman Mailer, Mel Gussow, Letters, Slidepollajax, Harry Ransom Center, Celebrities, Culture News
Elana Estrin

Correspondence can speak volumes about the letter-writer. From idiosyncratic letterheads to sketches, stamps, cartoons and multiple-choice form letters, what do a letter's illustrations reveal?

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In Praise of the Novella

Dave Astor | Posted 11.01.2011

Read More: The Odyssey, Edith Wharton, John Steinbeck, Novellas, The Time Machine, A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Margaret Atwood, Billy Budd, Herman Melville, h.g. Wells, The Penelopiad, Carson McCullers, Ethan Frome, Books News
Dave Astor

A novella can be read in only a few hours, yet the best ones pack almost the same punch as much longer works of fiction.

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All-time Authors Sometimes Deliver Duds

Dave Astor | Posted 09.30.2011

Read More: John Steinbeck, Great Authors, Bad Novels, Stephen King, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Bad Books, Carson McCullers, Jack London, Great Author Bad Books, Author Book Fails, Books News
Dave Astor

Even great novelists occasionally write a clunker -- sort of a loose cannon in a canon. Often, the literary dud comes at or near the start of an author's career.

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WATCH: Retracing The Route Of 'The Grapes Of Wrath'

Posted 09.28.2011

Read More: Route 66, Joy Junction, Video, Paul Mason, Bbc, John Steinbeck, Poverty, Grapes of Wrath, Books News

John Steinbeck’s classic “The Grapes of Wrath” is the story of the Joads, a poor, working-class family from Oklahoma who are forced to abandon t...

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Return Of America's Middle-Class Underclass

BBC News | Paul Mason | Posted 09.28.2011

Read More: Underclass, John Steinbeck, Albuquerque, Unemployment Rate, Mogollon Rim, Great Recession, Subway, McDonald's, Jobless, Oklahoma, American Middle Class, Grapes of Wrath, Great Depression, Tent City, Migrant Worker, Business News

In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck describes the harrowing journey of the Joad family - migrant workers forced to leave their home during the Grea...

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10 Black & White Movies for People Who Won't Watch Black & White Movies

John Farr | Posted 09.27.2011

Read More: Fred MacMurray, ?€œthe Best Years of Our Lives?, The Grapes of Wrath, Academy Awards, Harper Lee, All About Eve, Fredric March, The Apartment, Best Movies by Farr, Rod Steiger, Citizen Kane, Walter Huston, Robert Duvall, Pulitzer Prize, Marilyn Monroe, Black and White, Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin, Jack Lemmon, Duck Soup, Gregory Peck, On the Waterfront, Elia Kazan, American Film Institute, Humphrey Bogart, John Steinbeck, Movie Recommendations, Orson Welles, Movie Suggestions, Billy Wilder, Best Movies on DVD, Best Movies, Casablanca, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, John Huston, Schindler's List, Shirley MacLaine, Sidney Lumet, 12 Angry Men, William Wyler, The Marx Brothers, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Myrna Loy, Marlon Brando, To Kill a Mockingbird, Bette Davis, Culture News
John Farr

If I could get all those black and white haters out there to watch just ten titles -- movies that constituted absolutely essential viewing -- which would they be?

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Reading Harry Potter and Other Multi-Volume Works in One Big Gulp

Dave Astor | Posted 09.14.2011

Read More: J.K. Rowling, Jack Finney, Quidditch, Darryl Brock, John Steinbeck, L.M. Montgomery, Sequels, Alexandre Dumas, J.R.R. Tolkien, Margaret Atwood, Harry Potter, Cormac McCarthy, Books News
Dave Astor

For me, reading a book series after all the installments have been written is as satisfying as watching a great Quidditch match. Well, almost.

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Spotted Reading In Public: Summer Reads On The Way To The Beach

Posted 09.07.2011

Read More: Neil Gaiman, John Steinbeck, Harper Lee, A Confederacy of Dunces, Reading in Public, Nick Hornby, Jules Verne, Spotted Reading in Public, Dune, Books News

New Yorkers read in public constantly, and we've spotted them reading plenty this summer on the way to the beach. And like the City itself, the collec...

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Many a City Is 'Title Town'

Dave Astor | Posted 09.06.2011

Read More: Barbara Kingsolver, Ford Madox Ford, Toronto, John Steinbeck, Chicago, National Society of Newspaper Columnists, Boston, Edward Bellamy, Detroit Lions, Upton Sinclair, Margaret Atwood, Canada, Jules Verne, Detroit Institute of Arts, Amy Tan, Quebec City, Frida Kahlo, E.L. Doctorow, Phoenix, Terry McMillan, Diego Rivera, San Francisco, James Hilton, Ford Field, Willa Cather, Books News, Detroit, Books News
Dave Astor

Do you read so much fiction that visiting a city almost always reminds you of certain novels?

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PHOTOS: 8 Things You Probably Don't Know About Famous Authors

Dave Astor | Posted 08.30.2011

Read More: Alexandre Dumas, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, Famous Authors, Slidepollajax, John Steinbeck, Famous Author Facts, Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Video, Books News
Dave Astor

Curiosity about great novelists has inspired me to read dozens of author biographies. In those books (and on the Web), one can discover many "wow"-inducing facts about renowned writers

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