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Travels with Charley: In Search of America
by John Steinbeck

Travels with Charley: In Search of America Cover

Powells.com Staff Pick

Wanderlust is a pervasive, seemingly incurable "virus of restlessness." Not contagious in any clinical sense, you either have it or you don't. John Steinbeck did, in spades. As the 1960s commenced, Steinbeck, according to his oldest son, sensed his impending twilight, and thus set out with his French poodle, Charley, to see his country a final time. Spanning nearly 10,000 miles — from New York, through New England, across the northern U.S. border, into the Pacific Northwest, down through California and the Southwest, across Texas and the Deep South, and back up to the Empire State — Travels with Charley is a classic travelogue full of hope and heartbreak. Steinbeck's journey showed him an America of utter abundance, full of wrenching beauty, yet also replete with deplorable excess and intolerance. Nearly 50 years later, the book's candid observations remain both poignant and pertinent, a literary snapshot of a nation whose idyllic portrayal of itself never quite lives up to its reality.
Recommended by Jeremy, Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light--these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of 58, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.

Synopsis:

In September 1960, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America. A picaresque tale, this chronicle of their trip meanders along scenic backroads and speeds along anonymous superhighways, moving from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Travels with Charley is animated by Steinbeck's attention to the specific details of the natural world and his sense of how the lives of people are intimately connected to the rhythms of nature - to weather, geography, the cycles of the seasons. His keen ear for the transactions among people is evident, too, as he records the interests and obsessions that preoccupy the Americans he encounters along the way.
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About the Author

No writer is more quintessentially American than John Steinbeck. Born in 1902 in Salinas, California, Steinbeck attended Stanford University before working at a series of mostly blue-collar jobs and embarking on his literary career. Profoundly committed to social progress, he used his writing to raise issues of labor exploitation and the plight of the common man, penning some of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century and winning such prestigious awards as the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He received the Nobel Prize in 1962, "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception." Today, more than thirty years after his death, he remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
beachbum98547, December 12, 2007 (view all comments by beachbum98547)
A timeless travelogue, which touches all who have read his books, putting a personal touch for me to have lived in a town he visited(Butte) and had gone often to the sport shop he went to in passing. Sometimes just the wisp of of that passing kinders being touched by greatness...........
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780142000700
Subtitle:
In Search of America
Author:
Steinbeck, John
Publisher:
Penguin Books
Location:
New York
Subject:
General
Subject:
Biography
Subject:
United states
Subject:
United States - General
Subject:
Essays & Travelogues
Subject:
Authors, American
Subject:
Literary
Copyright:
1990
Edition Description:
Centennial
Series Volume:
71
Publication Date:
February 2002
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
214
Dimensions:
8.47x5.64x.63 in. .61 lbs.
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