A Russian Journal (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

A Russian Journal (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

Steinbeck and Capa’s account of their journey through Cold War Russia is a classic piece of reportage and travel writing. Featuring newly reset, high-resolution black and white photography by Robert Capa A Penguin Classic 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 New York Herald Tribune . 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appeared in 1948, A Russian Journal is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document. 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, A Russian Journal 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. Through 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. 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. After the Iron Curtain was established following World War II, Steinbeck, along with photographer Bob Capa, ventured into the Soviet Union on behalf of the New York Herald Tribune. This 1948 volume collects the full run of his reports with numerous pictures. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Steinbeck and Capa's account of their journey through Cold War Russia is a classic piece of reportage and travel writing 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 New York Herald Tribune. 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, A Russian Journal is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document. 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, A Russian Journal 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. Through it all, we are given intimate glimpses of two artists at the height of their powers, answering their need to document human struggle. John Steinbeck , 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,  Cup of Gold  (1929).   After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two California books,  The Pastures of Heaven  (1932) and  To a God Unknown  (1933), and worked on short stories later collected in  The Long Valley  (1938). Popular success and financial security came only with  Tortilla Flat  (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:  In Dubious Battle  (1936),  Of Mice and Men  (1937), and the book considered by many his finest,  The Grapes of Wrath  (1939).  The Grapes of Wrath  won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.   Early in the 1940s, Steinbeck became a filmmaker with  The Forgotten Village  (1941) and a serious student of marine biology with  Sea of Cortez  (1941). He devoted his services to the