Four essays and a general introduction provide contemporary readings of The Grapes of Wrath for a general audience. Written in an accessible style, the essays cover the issues and themes of Steinbeck's politics, metaphors of movement and growth, views of women, uses of documentary, and the conversion of the novel into film. The introduction provides a history of the novel's public reception, a summary of the major phases of critical response, and a reading of the novel as an act of returning west to Steinbeck's lost California.