Originally published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin Inc. 1962

Steinbeck records his emotions and experiences during a journey of rediscovery in his native land

"Suggestions for Further Exploration by Jenna Garden and Susan Shillinglaw."

A quest across America, from the northernmost tip of Maine to California's Monterey Peninsula. 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 fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years. With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. And he reflects on the American character, on racial hositlity, on a particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and on the unexpected kindness of strangers that is also a very real part of our national identity

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