Travels with Charley in Search of America

· Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Gary Sinise
4.6
13 reviews
Audiobook
7 hr 58 min
Unabridged
Eligible
Want a free 10 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline. 
Add

About this audiobook

An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers
 
To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.

With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and  the unexpected kindness of strangers.

Ratings and reviews

4.6
13 reviews
Gina Cress
October 26, 2022
Wonderful! Great book! plan to read again ASAP
Did you find this helpful?
Jaime delobo
July 29, 2023
Life's truth expressed.
Did you find this helpful?
Pete Rizzo
September 11, 2019
Best book by John imho
Did you find this helpful?

About the author

John Steinbeck, born in Salinas, California, in 1902, grew up in a fertile agricultural valley, about 25 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.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 30 years after his death, he remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures.

Gary Sinise is an award-winning actor who is best known for his role as Lieutenant Dan Taylor in Forrest Gump, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. He also won acclaim for his work in Of Mice and Men, Apollo 13, Truman (Golden Globe Award), and George Wallace (Emmy Award). He has narrated several books by John Steinbeck, including Of Mice and Men and Travels with Charley in Search of America.

Rate this audiobook

Tell us what you think.

Listening information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.

Listeners also liked

More by John Steinbeck

Similar audiobooks