{"product_id":"a-russian-journal-9780141180199","title":"A Russian Journal","description":"\u003cb\u003eSteinbeck and Capa's account of their journey through Cold War Russia is a classic piece of reportage and travel writing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eFeaturing newly reset, high-resolution black and white photography by Robert Capa \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e A Penguin Classic \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Just after the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the \u003ci\u003eNew York Herald Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e. This rare opportunity took the famous travelers not only to Moscow and Stalingrad - now Volgograd - but through the countryside of the Ukraine and the Caucasus. Hailed by the New York Times as \"superb\" when it first appeared in 1948, \u003cb\u003eA Russian Journal\u003c\/b\u003e is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e What they saw and movingly recorded in words and on film was what Steinbeck called \"the great other side there ... the private life of the Russian people.\" Unlike other Western reporting about Russia at the time, \u003cb\u003eA Russian Journal\u003c\/b\u003e is free of ideological obsessions. Rather, Steinbeck and Capa recorded the grim realities of factory workers, government clerks, and peasants, as they emerged from the rubble of World War II--represented here in Capa's stirring photographs alongside Steinbeck's masterful prose.\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eThrough it all, we are given intimate glimpses of two artists at the height of their powers, answering their need to document human struggle. This edition features an introduction by Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJohn Steinbeck\u003c\/b\u003e, born in Salinas, California, in 1902, grew up in a fertile agricultural valley, about twenty-five miles from the Pacific Coast. Both the valley and the 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, \u003ci\u003eCup of Gold\u003c\/i\u003e (1929). \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two California books, \u003ci\u003eThe Pastures of Heaven\u003c\/i\u003e (1932) and \u003ci\u003eTo a God Unknown\u003c\/i\u003e (1933), and worked on short stories later collected in \u003ci\u003eThe Long Valley\u003c\/i\u003e (1938). Popular success and financial security came only with \u003ci\u003eTortilla Flat\u003c\/i\u003e (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: \u003ci\u003eIn Dubious Battle\u003c\/i\u003e (1936), \u003ci\u003eOf Mice and Men\u003c\/i\u003e (1937), and the book considered by many his finest, \u003ci\u003eThe Grapes of Wrath\u003c\/i\u003e (1939). \u003ci\u003eThe Grapes of Wrath\u003c\/i\u003e won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1939. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Early in the 1940s, Steinbeck became a filmmaker with \u003ci\u003eThe Forgotten Village\u003c\/i\u003e (1941) and a serious student of marine biology with \u003ci\u003eSea of Cortez\u003c\/i\u003e (1941). He devoted his services to the war, writing Bombs Away (1942) and the controversial play-novelette \u003ci\u003eThe Moon is Down\u003c\/i\u003e (1942).\u003ci\u003eCannery Row\u003c\/i\u003e (1945), \u003ci\u003eThe Wayward Bus\u003c\/i\u003e (1948), another experimental drama, \u003ci\u003eBurning Bright\u003c\/i\u003e(1950), and \u003ci\u003eThe Log from the Sea of Cortez\u003c\/i\u003e (1951) preceded publication of the monumental \u003ci\u003eEast of Eden\u003c\/i\u003e (1952), an ambitious saga of the Salinas Valley and his own family's history. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e 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 \u003ci\u003eSweet Thursday\u003c\/i\u003e (1954), \u003ci\u003eThe Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication\u003c\/i\u003e (1957), \u003ci\u003eOnce There Was a War\u003c\/i\u003e (1958), \u003ci\u003eThe Winter of Our Discontent \u003c\/i\u003e(1961), \u003ci\u003eTravels with Charley in Search of America\u003c\/i\u003e (1962), \u003ci\u003eAmerica and Americans\u003c\/i\u003e (1966), and the posthumously published \u003ci\u003eJournal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters\u003c\/i\u003e (1969), \u003ci\u003eViva Zapata!\u003c\/i\u003e(1975), \u003ci\u003eThe Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights\u003c\/i\u003e (1976), and \u003ci\u003eWorking Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath\u003c\/i\u003e (1989). \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962, and, in 1964, he was presented with the United States Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Steinbeck died in New York in 1968. Today, more than thirty years after his death, he remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eSusan Shillinglaw\u003c\/b\u003e is a professor of English San Jose State University. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eOn Reading the Grapes of Wrath\u003c\/i\u003e and\u003ci\u003e Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Penguin Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50620021375250,"sku":"9780141180199","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_dafda7d8-66b7-47ac-8f27-8ed2fa207a45.jpg?v=1732559135","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/a-russian-journal-9780141180199","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}