Gathered in this volume are seven long-form articles that John Steinbeck wrote in 1936 for about the plight of migrant farmworkers during the Dust Bowl, accompanied by photographs by Dorothea Lange and others. Steinbeck toured the squatters' camps and Hoovervilles of California, creating unforgettable portraits of once strong, independent farmers reduced to misery. The inquisitiveness and outrage of an investigative reporter combined with the expressive powers of a novelist in his prime fueled , which in turn furnished the factual and emotional roots for and has long been hailed as an American classic in its own right.