The Harvest Gypsies

Gathered in this important volume are seven newspaper articles on migrant farm workers that John Steinbeck wrote for <i>The San Francisco News</i> in 1936, three years before <i>The Grapes of Wrath</i>. With the inquisitiveness of an investigative reporter and the emotional power of a novelist in his prime, Steinbeck toured the squatters' camps and Hoovervilles of California. <i>The Harvest Gypsies</i> gives us an eyewitness account of the horrendous Dust Bowl migration, a major event in California history, and provides the factual foundation for Steinbeck’s masterpiece, <i>The Grapes of Wrath</i>. Included are twenty-two photographs by Dorothea Lange and others, many of which accompanied Steinbeck's original articles.