Moving through the woods and deserts, dirt tracks and highways to large cities and glorious wildernesses, the author observed America, and the Americans who inhabited it. What he saw was a lonely, generous nation too packed with individuals for single judgements; what he saw made him proud, angry, sympathetic and elated.

Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck is remembered as one of the greatest and best-loved American writers of the twentieth century. His novels have been huge best-selllers in the UK for many years. Steinbeck's complete works will be available in Penguin Modern Classics.