The Log from the Sea of Cortez
- ISBN13: 9780140187441
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. Over the next year, his many works published as black-spine Penguin Classics for the first time and will feature eye-catching, newly commissioned art. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers—and to the many who revisit them again and again…. More >>
But still a good read. If you are an aficianado of Steinbeck you are gonna find few less pleasurable than this one.
The writer’s other works from that period, Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday are the Steinbeck masterpieces, in my opinion. Reading this one is all about filling in the gaps between readings of the major pieces of the Steinbeck puzzle.
On the other hand, the Steinbeck lover, if he’s true to the passion, will wish to read them all. This one will tell you much about Steinbeck as a young man, which makes it worth the price of admission.
Rating: 4 / 5
steinbeck’s darwinian novel that captues a sense of adventure as well with his good friend. there may be a need to be interested in the science of animal classification to really enjoy this book.
Rating: 4 / 5
Buy this book and read the first part: the part about Ed Ricketts. Then read a chapter or two, from anywhere in the rest of the book. Then you’re done. Steinbeck’s story of his dear friend Ed is as moving a memoir as I know of. This is Steinbeck at his best–the prose is crisp and compelling, and salted with tangible things of the world. You are taken to Monterrey and to Ed’s lab. You feel yourself present as the two buddies drink beer together, surrounded by aquatic specimens. You feel the love that the two men felt for eachother–two eccentric intellectuals living in a town more concerned with squid than Shakespeare. You sense from Steinbeck that Ed was a true brother and that he could see himself in his friend. It is a marvelous, short piece, perhaps 80 pages in all. As for their journey to the Sea of Cortez? A windy story, ruined by machismo speculations on life, evolution, boats, people, and the nature of things. The depictions of Mexicans are just awful, drawn from a real distance, and written from an ignorant and gringo point of view. Take the book for what it is, a creature in two halves, one lovely and true, the other a rambling set of notes better left unpublished and unread.
Rating: 3 / 5
The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck is the story of a group of men on a journey through the Gulf of California with the plan to study the marine organisms that lived there, but they ended up studying a lot more. As the book was written by a writer and not a scientist the scientific side is seen through a different angle. Amongst all of the stops to collect specimens are thrown Steinbeck’s tangents about the ideas of the world, the way that people behave, and philosophical ideas.
Throughout the journey of the Western Flyer the company made many stops along the coast of the Baja peninsula and along mainland Mexico. At each one of these stops Steinbeck tells of the collecting and the names of the different organisms along with the environments that they lived in. Steinbeck does a careful job of describing the animals and plants and using their scientific names in order to make the book useful for scientific purposes.
The journey also contains many stops in the towns and cities that border the Gulf. At each one of these stops Steinbeck gives a detailed account of their experience and a description of the people and their culture. One feels like he is actually traveling through Mexico and meeting the people while reading the book.
Rating: 3 / 5
This book is about a small crew of men, most of which are scientists. They rent a boat and set sail off the coast of California. They travel all over the sea on the coast of California and Mexico, in the Sea of Cortez. The point of this voyage is not for mere joy, it is for collecting, observing, and preserving species that inhabit the sea. The focus on the interdial zone for the most part.
This book documents the journey and all the adventures that take place. One of my favorite quotes from the book is ” the reports of Biologists are the measure, not of science, but of the men themselves”. These men took the time to log everything that they did. They were meticulous in their gathering, and studying.
This book is not just about the species they collected. It is about the men and the things they learned along the journey. They learned to slow down and actually look at life. They were able to ponder all kinds of life, theirs and those of land and sea. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about themselves and the adventures that can occur while doing research.
Rating: 4 / 5