John Steinbeck spent the night of October 12, 1960, in Beach, North Dakota, just a few miles from the Montana border. He was about to fall in love with Montana. 
A visit with author, falconer and pioneering regenerative rancher Dan O’Brien on his remarkable Cheyenne River Buffalo Ranch.
May 9 / John Steinbeck, his dog Charley and his camper rig.
This spring, Clay departed Sag Harbor, New York, on an expedition to follow John Steinbeck's 1960 cross-country trek immortalized in Travels with Charley. Recently, after completing the first phase of the trip, Clay reflects on what he's learned about Steinbeck and how he now sees the story behind the classic travelogue.
A visit to the Blue Ridge Mountains home of America’s beloved poet, Carl Sandburg.
The famous “Earthrise,” photograph taken by Apollo VIII astronaut William Anders, December 24, 1968.
Astronaut William Anders, died on June 7, 2024 at the age of 90. Anders, a member of the Apollo 8 team, will always be remembered as the man who took the famous Earthrise photograph on Christmas Eve 1968.
As Clay prepares for the second leg of his Travels with Charley journey, Russ Eagle calls out the best John Steinbeck biographies.
Kew Gardens, London. A paining by French artist, Lucien Pissarro, 1892.
I was listening to an audio biography of Joseph Banks, the great British naturalist who sailed with Captain James Cook, who made Kew Gardens in Britain, and who was the president of the Royal Society — among much else, not all so admirable it turns out.
In my second week of travels, I drove up much of the length of Maine, because in 1960 John Steinbeck was determined to touch the roof of the United States before turning west, and I reckoned you aren’t really fulfilling the mission unless you follow his path.
Steinbeck struggles against poverty, but the publication of Tortilla Flat changes everything.

The Age of Acrimony

Lindsay Chervinsky reviews “… the dirty tale of how democracy got clean” in Jon Grinspan’s The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915.
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