Product Description

From a swashbuckling pirate fantasy to a meditation on American morality--two classic Steinbeck novels make their black spine debuts

IN AWARDING John Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel committee stated that with The Winter of Our Discontent, he had "resumed his position as an independent expounder of the truth, with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American."

Ethan Allen Hawley, the protagonist of the novel, works as a clerk in a grocery store that his family once owned. With the decline in their status, his wife is restless, and his teenage children are hungry for the tantalizing material comforts he cannot provide. Then one day, in a moment of moral crisis, Ethan decides to take a holiday from his own scrupulous standards.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9102 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

About the Author
JOHN STEINBECK was born in Salinas, California, in 1902, grew up in a fertile agricultural valley about twenty-five miles from the Pacific Coast and both valley and coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction. In 1919 he went to Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 without taking a degree. During the next five years he supported himself as a laborer and journalist in New York City, all the time working on his first novel, Cup of Gold (1929). After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two California books, The Pastures of Heaven (1932) and To a God Unknown (1933), and worked on short stories later collected in The Long Valley (1938). Popular success and financial security came only with Tortilla Flat (1935), stories about Monterey's paisanos. A ceaseless experimenter throughout his career, Steinbeck changed courses regularly. Three powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the California laboring class: In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and the book considered by many his finest, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Early in the 1940s, Steinbeck became a filmmaker with The Forgotten Village (1941) and a serious student of marine biology with Sea of Cortez (1941). He devoted his services to the war, writing Bombs Away (1942) and the controversial play-novelette The Moon is Down (1942). Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward Bus (1948), another experimental drama, Burning Bright (1950), and The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951) preceded publication of the monumental East of Eden (1952), an ambitious saga of the Salinas Valley and his own family's history. The last decades of his life were spent in New York City and Sag Harbor with his third wife, with whom he traveled widely. Later books include Sweet Thursday (1954), The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (1957), Once There Was a War (1958), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962) America and Americans (1966), and the posthumously published Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (1969), Viva Zapata! (1975), The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976), and Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath (1989). He died in 1968, having won a Nobel Prize in 1962.

Customer Reviews

Makes an impact
This book, along with Steinbeck's EAST OF EDEN, are the two best things he ever wrote. It took me a while to get into WINTER, but once I did, I couldn't stop reading. I was absolutely overwhelmed at the ending, just as I usually am with this writer's great finishes. If you've never read anything by this author, this is a good place to start. Would also recommend THE BARK OF THE DOGOWOD for another really great read.

Very Good
"The Winter Of Our Discontent" is not Steinbeck's best, but it's really a good read and you can't go wrong spending a few hours reading the works of this master of American Lit!

Discontent? Read this book.
A powerful novel, with a plot that most can relate to. Ethan Hawley, the main character struggles to provide for his family. Comes from a family of successful business men, until The Great Depression hits his family hard and he must start from the bottom, working as a produce market clerk. He feels that he must own up to his name that has been made by his predecessors. He is confronted by opportunities that question his integrity and common sense.
What I like about this novel is that present day situations arise which grabs my attention and makes me think. Ethan, married with two children, thinks of his family first, because all he wants is to give them what he feels they deserve. He would sacrifice his own happiness to make his family happy.
I also can relate to how he sometimes feels disappointed by how his life is panning out, but doesn't forget all the things he should be grateful for. I strongly recommend this novel to all who love to read. Whether you can relate to it or not, it will make you think, and help you appreciate some things that are taken for granted.