In his only work of political satire, The Short Reign of Pippin IV, John Steinbeck turns the French Revolution upside down as amateur astronomer Pippin Héristal is drafted to rule the unruly French. Steinbeck creates around the infamous Pippin the most hilarious royal court ever: Pippin’s wife, Queen Marie, who might …
The Wayward Bus is a novel by American author John Steinbeck, originally published in 1947. The novel's epigraph is a passage from 15th-century English play Everyman, with its archaic English intact; the quotation refers to the transitory nature of humanity. Although considered one of Steinbeck's weaker novels at the …
Ethan Allen Hawley has lost the acquisitive spirit of his wealthy and enterprising forebears, a long line of proud New England sea captains and Pilgrims. Scarred by failure, Ethan works as a grocery clerk in a store his family once owned. But his wife is restless and his teenage children troubled and hungry for the …