Showing results by author "Susan Shillinglaw" in All Categories

Just after the iron curtain fell on Eastern Europe, John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the New York Herald Tribune. This rare opportunity took the famous travellers not only to Moscow and Stalingrad - now Volgograd - but through the countryside of the Ukraine and the Caucasus. A Russian Journal is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document.

Meet the gamblers, whores, drunks, bums and artists of Cannery Row in Monterey, California, during the Great Depression. They want to throw a party for their friend Doc, so Mack and the boys set about, in their own inimitable way, recruiting everyone in the neighbourhood to the cause. But along the way they can't help but get involved in a little mischief and misadventure. It wouldn't be Cannery Row if it was otherwise, now would it?

Steinbeck’s vision is grounded in place—first in Central California, where he was born and lived until he was 41, and in his later life when he became a troubadour of the Americas, traversing the U.S. and Mexico. Throughout his long writing life—his work spans the years 1929 to 1966—his vision as a writer was fundamentally holistic and ecological: he believed that to understand people, you had to know something about the places they occupied, their landscapes, their histories, their spirits.