The Heroic and Problematic Legacy of Joseph Banks
Monday, June 10 2024
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.
- Published in Features
John Steinbeck Among the French Canadian Harvest Gypsies
Tuesday, June 04 2024
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.
- Published in Features
Tortilla Flat: Steinbeck’s Early Years
Monday, June 03 2024
Steinbeck struggles against poverty, but the publication of Tortilla Flat changes everything.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
The Age of Acrimony
Monday, May 27 2024
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.
- Published in Books
A Visit With Author Jay Parini of Middlebury, Vermont
Friday, May 17 2024
Sitting in the Airstream, Rocinante. I had a delightful interview with Steinbeck biographer Jay Parini of Middlebury College in Vermont.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
The Age of Exploration Meets the Era of Disillusionment
Thursday, May 16 2024
I have been reading Hampton Sides’ excellent new study of Captain James Cook’s third voyage (1776-1779), The Wide, Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact, and The Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook.
- Published in Books
Reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich While Traveling With Charley
Monday, May 13 2024
Clay visits Cedar Rapids, Iowa, boyhood home of pioneering journalist and author William Shirer, who later became friends with John Steinbeck.
- Published in Features
A Stop at Thoreau’s Walden Pond Near Concord, Massachusetts
Sunday, May 12 2024
Clay stops to visit Thoreau’s Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts as part of his Travels with Charley road trip.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
Visiting John Steinbeck’s Home in Sag Harbor, New York — Video Dispatch
Thursday, May 09 2024
Clay visits John Steinbeck’s Sag Harbor home where the noted author began his 1960 cross-country journey, immortalized in Travels With Charley.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
John Steinbeck’s True Motivations for Hitting the Road in 1960
Thursday, April 25 2024
As Clay begins his great Travels With Charley journey, our resident Steinbeck specialist, Russ Eagle, weighs in on what spurred the Nobel Prize-winning author to take to the road in a custom truck camper and his dog in 1960.
- Published in Features