a book
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck · 2014 · 464 pages
The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
A Penguin Classic
First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.
This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction and notes by Steinbeck scholar Robert Demott.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
A Penguin Classic
First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.
This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction and notes by Steinbeck scholar Robert Demott.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
recommended by 20 people
sourced from public statements
Nelson Mandela
“I read many American novels, and recall especially John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, in which I found many similarities between the plight of the migrant workers in that novel and our own laborers and farm workers.”↗
Hugh Jackman
“This was another book I read when I was in London doing the musical Oklahoma! with Trevor Nunn, who loves to think of everything in naturalistic terms. Oklahoma! is set about 20 years before The Grapes of Wrath. It shows American farm life before the Dust Bowl, and The Grapes of Wrath, obviously, is what came next. I was mesmerized by Tom Joad. He’s living a very egocentric life at the beginning of the novel, but along his family’s arduous trip to California, he is transformed into someone else entirely. I think the turning point occurs once he’s finally found work picking peaches. He’s so happy that he can feed his family, but he then discovers that he’s a strikebreaker. He’s faced with an impossible dilemma: He’s either supporting his family or putting the livelihoods of others in his community at risk. I connected with that arc of going outward. It wasn’t so long ago that my life was just all about me. Right around the time I read that book, of course, I was married and gradually realizing that with the opportunities you get you have responsibility beyond your family, beyond your community—and if you have some power to do things, you should do them.”↗
Bruce Springsteen
“Springsteen took inspiration from The Grapes of Wrath for his second solo guitar album, The Ghost of Tom Joad.”↗
Henry Rollins
“One day, I just picked it up and started reading it. Guys at school didn’t believe I was really reading it but I was. I found it hard to put down.”↗
Hugh Laurie
“Novels that set out to describe grand historical events sometimes struggle with scale: too big, and they lose the particular, the personal; too small, and they lose the immensity, the connectedness of all things. Steinbeck describes the experience of migrating ‘Okies’ during the Depression, and makes you weep on both scales.”↗
Ray Bradbury
“In The Grapes of Wrath, every other chapter is a description, a metaphor, prose poetry, it’s not plot…I subconsciously borrowed that structure from Steinbeck when I wrote The Martian Chronicles.”↗
Howard Zinn
“A powerful introduction to the Depression years.”↗
Elizabeth Tsurkov
“@Maysaloon great book!”↗
Natalie Shure
“@dryadboy one of my very favorite books!”↗
Kelly Carlin
“@KenJennings @VaguelyFunnyDan Such a powerful book.”↗
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