A review by sreddous
America and Americans by John Steinbeck

3.25

Given that Travels with Charley is one of my favorite books of all time, I was eager to find more of Steinbeck's writing about travel, geography, human geography, etc. But, truly, Steinbeck is a storyteller before he's an essayist, and that's pretty evident here. The writing is still descriptive but seems more blunt and straightforward, and that leaves more room for his opinions and claims to age poorly instead of remain the observing, timeless-feeling journey that Travels with Charley was. This was a quick, easy read, gave me a few chuckles from some particularly-efficient descriptions, but not terribly memorable (the pictures are awesome though).