Bestselling John Steinbeck Titles from Penguin

As its longer title indicates, Steinbeck's Cup of Gold is a work of historical fiction. It's a worthy first novel, but one can almost imagine an editor counseling the young Steinbeck to "write about what you know." Whether or not that is the case, Steinbeck returned to his beloved Salinas County, California for his succeeding works with considerable success.

Steinbeck followed Cup of Gold with a collection of twelve interrelated short stories The Pastures of Heaven and the short , loosely integrated The Red Pony -- which is described either as a four-chapter novel or a collection fo four short stories --drawing upon his boyhood experiences working summers on Salinas County ranches.

Later in 1933 To a God Unknown was published, a mystical tale about our connection to the land which is often overlooked.

Steinbeck's first real critical acclaim accompanied the release of Tortilla Flat, which won the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal. The book would later become a movie featuring Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, and John Garfield.

Many readers are unaware that Steinbeck pursued parallel careers in fiction and journalism, even though some of his better known works are non-fiction. His stories are often so believable that the line between fact and fantasy is easily blurred.

The Harvest Gypsies, is a series of seven articles written for the San Francisco News.in 1936. The work could well be seen a background for the controversial The Grapes of Wrath to come some three years later.

Much of this material is included in America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction, but the commentary by Charles Wollenberg, and photographs by Dorothea Lange and others make this a worthwhile acquisition.

During the latter half of the 1930's, Steinbeck wrote his "California Novels" series chronicling the dust bowl and the Great Depression. The appellation is somewhat odd, given that most of Steinbeck's novels are set in California, and more often than not, Salinas County. Nonetheless, the combination of Steinbeck's talent with the historical nature of the events unfolding in California led to a very productive period in his career and some of his best-loved novels.

In Dubious Battle is the story of a fictitious fruit-pickers strike, which resists the temptation to descend into Socialist diatribe concentrating instead on the conflicting goals that are part of human nature and the frustrations inherent in organizing a diverse group of laborers.

Of Mice and Men is a short (barely longer than the Cliff's Notes for those dreading an upcoming book report) powerful story of the dreams of two lonely men destined to be foiled by a cruel fate. Steinbeck's most celebrated work up to the time, it was a pre-publication Book of the Month Club selection, and was soon adapted for the stage and cinema.

Many consider The Grapes of Wrath to be Steinbeck's greatest work. The 1939 novel of the "Okies" displaced by the dust bowl won him the Pulitzer Prize, and ignited a storm of controversy over his "anti-capitalist" portrayal of wealthy landowners. John Ford's 1940 screen adaptation was a critical as well as a popular success, earning a young Henry Fonda his first Oscar nomination for his role as Tom Joad.

In 1940, Steinbeck took a cruise with his longtime friend, marine biologist and philosopher Ed Ricketts jointly publishing the record of that trip as Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research in 1941, and republished in an abridged form as The Log from the "Sea of Cortez" in 1951.

Ricketts became the model for several of Steinbeck's most memorable characters, including "Doc" in Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday, Doc Burton in In Dubious Battle, Jim Casy in The Grapes of Wrath, and Doctor Winter in The Moon is Down.

Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for The New York Herald Tribune during World War II, and his dispatches form a large part of his 1958 publication, Once There Was a War.

In 1942, he published Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team, and more notably The Moon is Down. In order to properly appreciate that work, you must realize that it was deliberately written as propaganda to inspire European resistance to the Third Reich, thus never referring directly to the Nazis (although the identity of "the invaders" is clearly implied).

During the war, The Moon is Down was translated into numerous languages and clandestinely distributed throughout occupied Europe. In a fine example of life imitating art, the book inspired Churchill to conceive Operation Braddock, supplying various resistance organizations with arms and other support.

In 1944, Steinbeck wrote an unpublished novel which became the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's classic Lifeboat, about survivors of a u-boat attack. Although nominated for the Best Original Story Academy Award in 1944, Steinbeck asked that his name be removed from the credits, because he felt the film had racist overtones.

Upon returning from Europe, Steinbeck quickly wrote three books that had apparently been "put on hold," during the war.

Cannery Row is a short tale centering on the life of cannery workers in the Monterrey Bay area, featuring the iconic "Doc" -- modelled after Ed Ricketts.

While Steinbeck's works generally feature sympathetic characters, The Wayward Bus is an exception. The people stranded in a small cafe at a crossroads in Southern California while their bus is repaired are obviously flawed. Some would call this more realistic than Steinbeck's other works. There were certainly some bad reviews for this book, but it is evident from remarks in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech that Steinbeck discounted them. Readers will have to decide for themselves, but many people find this to be their favorite Steinbeck work.

The Pearl, published in 1947 with a film deal already in hand, is Steinbeck's retelling of a Mexican folk-tale he heard during his 1940 cruise in the Gulf of California. It has a mythic quality in spite of its brevity.

In late 1947 and 1948, Steinbeck returned to the New York Herald Tribune where he travelled through Stalinist Russia with photographer Robert Capa.

His reports were published in 1948 as A Russian Journal, a work of considerable historic importance. The depiction of post-war Russia was perhaps the clearest and least-censored possible given the cold war tensions which even then were building inside The U.S. and Soviet Union.

Steinbeck entered a bit of a "dry spell" in 1948, no doubt at least in part due to the untimely death of his friend Ed Ricketts in a car-train collision. He published Burning Bright for the theater, which was a flop.

Steinbeck acknowledged the value writing a script as dialogue with a bare minimum of stage directions in order to leave some freedom of interpretation to the director and actors. Nonetheless, he was intent on writing a play "in story format," with considerably more description so that a company might at least know the author's intent and so it would be more of a standalone work for readers.

This idea did not prove to be popular, and the dialogue required to develop characters within the context of a play came off as contrived and unnatural in the context of a novel.

In 1950 he published The Log from the "Sea of Cortez" which was simply the narrative portions of the more detailed Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research, published jointly with Ricketts ten years earlier. Ironically the abridged version was more of a popular success than the original.

Steinbeck ended his career as he had begun it -- on a romantic note. His The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is a translation of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, which scholars generally concur is among the best.

The other books here were private journals and letters not intended for publication, and as such may be a bit rough around the edges. For those interested in the process of writing, they are priceless.

Dividing these film adaptations into "early," "later" and "latest" categories is an artificial distinction necessitated by the Squidoo Amazon module's five-item limit. I've included the year each film was originally released in the comments, which I hope will clarify matters somewhat.

Here is a quick summary of the titles for those who don't want to wait for Amazon's full pages to load.

Dividing these film adaptations into "early," "later" and "latest" categories is an artificial distinction necessitated by the Squidoo Amazon module's five-item limit. I've included the year each film was originally released in the comments, which I hope will clarify matters somewhat.

Here is a quick summary of the titles for those who don't want to wait for Amazon's full pages to load.

Dividing these film adaptations into "early," "later" and "latest" categories is an artificial distinction necessitated by the Squidoo Amazon module's five-item limit. I've included the year each film was originally released in the comments, which I hope will clarify matters somewhat.

Here is a quick summary of the titles for those who don't want to wait for Amazon's full pages to load.

Great literature derives much of its power from the author's ability to draw upon the reader's experience through such literary devices as allusion and metaphor. These nuances are often lost on readers whose backgrounds may lack specific references. Study guides fill these gaps by pointing out connections which you might otherwise miss.

Cliff's Notes pioneered the field of supplementary literary critiques. Of course, they have become a well-known substitute for the original texts, but they are even better when used as originally intended.

If you're interested in the process of writing, Steinbeck provides a rare glimpse into the task.

Steinbeck's works are still under copyright, so they aren't available for free in electronic format as many other "classics" are. Most of them are available in Kindle format from Amazon.com. Kindle books are not only convenient and portable, but are offered at considerable discounts from hardcopy prices.