Linda Wagner-Martin was awarded the Hubbell Medal for Lifetime Service to American Literature in 2011. She has published more than sixty books about American writers, including influential literary biographies on Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Barbara Kingsolver, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and others. She taught at Wayne State University, Michigan State University, and The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. In the Literary Lives series, she has published works on Ernest Hemingway, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and Toni Morrison.

Preface.- Chapter One: Steinbeck and the Short Story.- Chapter Two: Tortilla Flat, The Book of the Others.- Chapter Three: Journalism v Fiction.- Chapter Four: The Grapes of Wrath.- Chapter Five: The Sea of Cortez, A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research.- Chapter Six: World War II.- Chapter Seven: Cannery Row and The Pearl.- Chapter Eight: The Ed Ricketts Narratives.- Chapter Nine: East of Eden and the 1950s.- Chapter Ten: The Winter of Our Discontent.- Chapter Eleven: Travels with Charley In Search of America.- Chapter Twelve: The Nobel Prize for Literature.- Index

This book aims to both describe and analyze the way Steinbeck learned the writing craft. It begins with his immersion in the short story, some years after he stopped attending Stanford University. Aside from a weak first novel, his professional writing career began with the publication in 1932 of The Pastures of Heaven, stories set in the Salinas Valley and dedicated to his parents. From that book he wrote truly commanding stories such as The Red Pony. Intermixed with Steinbeck's journalism about California's labor difficulties, his writing skill led to his 1930 masterpieces, Of Mice and Men, In Dubious Battle, and The Grapes of Wrath. The latter novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1940, led eventually to his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He continued producing such wide-ranging works as The Pearl, East of Eden, The Winter of Our Discontent, and Travels with Charley up to just a few months before his death in 1968.