In America: Travels with John Steinbeck

The celebrated Dutch journalist follows John Steinbeck around America, 50 years on from the journey (in 1960) that became Travels With Charley. Steinbeck, great chronicler of the ordinary American working man, at 57 and with his great novels published, felt at odds with 'this monster of a land', and set out to reacquaint himself with his home country at a time of huge change and boundless opportunity. Mak, with a European's eye, follows his route, searching for what has changed and what remains of Steinbeck's world, half a century on. Mak is at once a sharp-eyed journalist and hugely imaginative historian — in a conversational, elegant style, he sets out to define America in the early twenty-first century, retelling the stories of ordinary people he meets — fisherman, farmers, teachers — as he did in In Europe.