Books

New York: Covici-Friede Publishers, 1936. Signed limited first edition of this "dramatically intense, beautifully written novel" (The New Republic); the first book in Steinbeck's Dustbowl trilogy, which was followed by Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath, number 39 of 99 examples. Octavo, original half morocco. Signed by John Steinbeck. In fine condition. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. On publication, New York Times reviewer Fred T. March compared it to the "genial gusto" of the "picaresque" Tortilla Flat. He commented that "You would never know that In Dubious Battle was by the same John Steinbeck if the publishers did not tell you so." He called it "courageous and desperately honest," "the best labor and strike novel to come out of our contemporary economic and social unrest," and "such a novel as Sinclair Lewis at his best might have done had he gone on with his projected labor novel." In 1943, with Steinbeck now famous, Carlos Baker "revalued"…

In Dubious Battle is a novel by John Steinbeck, written in 1936, that tells the story of a fruit worker's strike in California which is both orchestrated and led in part by the novel's protagonist, who is involved in the labor movement.