The Grapes of Wrath

by John Steinbeck

Book Overview

The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized--and sometimes outraged--millions of readers. 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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0142000663
• ISBN13: 9780142000663
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.7" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

You learn more about the Dust Bowl in this book than you do in the classroom.

Though a historical fiction that takes place after the Dust Bowl and amidst the Great Depression in the 1930s, Steinbeck brings to life a southern culture and time period that otherwise remains silent in the history classroom. As men struggle to find work to be the breadwinner for their families, they also struggle with their identity, for men’s identity is often tied to their work. It brings questions of prejudice and discrimination against a poor, suffering people. What are our own prejudices against migrants? Yet most of all, it tells the story of family unity that when times are especially tough, the best way forward is a work ethic of togetherness that helps your fellow man in need even when you have suffering of your own.

If this is what GOOD quality is, I’m afraid to see what next step down looks like.

The physical condition of the book is what I would qualify as good, but the amount of notes in the book make a large portion of the book impossible to read.

I can't write a review well enough

This book, along with The Jungle by Sinclair, are on the top of my favorite books list. There is no describing the events of this book that can do it justice, you just have to read it for yourself. This is one of the most powerful messages about America, and how it treats its poor.

Not what I thought I ordered

I was looking for a good hardbound copy of The Grapes of Wrath. This is not the book by Steinbook but a commentary on the book. I will try to buy the book again and keep this book as a companion.

"I'll be there..."

"Ya gotta eat..." Dad used uto say if we thanked him for taking to the local hamburger stand; he could have, just as easily, been stating the obvious theme of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. One can easily imagine Tom Joad or, more to the point, his sister Rosasharon saying it in her "sharing" scene in the closing pages of the book. I read this book, the first time, in sophomore study hall just before lunch in small town Wisconsin; largely as a result of the wretched deprivations depicted in the book, I remember rushing home, sure I would starve to death if I didn't immediately ingest the bowl of soup and sandwich my mother had waiting for me. As the Joad family move out of Dustbowl Oklahoma toward the promised land of California, the Joads must survive on fried dough and unripe fruit (from which they are warned they may "get the skitters"); Along the way they meet tragedy and, in most cases, their dreams of a better life are smashed like last year's fallen fruit...And, yet, they still hope for the best. Maybe the next Hooverville will be different, maybe the next fruit ranch; if they could only make it there. Government offered little or no help. Long before the rest of the nation hit the skids, farmers were getting the short end of the stick; they never saw any of the prosperity of the 1920's, and the Dustbowl didn't help either. But Tom Joad sees hope in numbers, "Wherever a guy is hungry, I'll be there...", he says, urging the readers to come along, to fight injustice wherever they can: a challenge as urgent today as when Tom made it in this wonderful book.

excelente

cuando lei este libro hasta llegue a sonar unas cuantas veces con estar en la carretera polvosa camino a otra comunidad donde pudiese conseguir un mejor empleo, y durmiendo en una hooverville. la historia es fascinante y es tan buena que la novela no parece las paginas parecen cortas. la familia que emigra, la lucha por un trabajo, la muerte, el crecimiento y distaciamiento de la familia. esta novela pinta un cuadro dramatico aunque lleno de hermosura narrativa de la gran depresion de los anos treinta, narrada en un lenguaje humano. es una de las mejores de este autor. muy recomendada..LUIS MENDEZ