"[ Mad at the World] highlights the staggering amount of work he [ Steinbeck] fitted into his overflowing life... highly readable..." -- The Sunday Times "William Souders Mad at the World is the first significant biography of Steinbeck since Jackson L. Bensons... The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer. It is readable, admiring and compact, and provides a narratively energetic look at a man who suffered many of the same weaknesses as his characters for booze, benzedrine, depression and bad marriages... Souder writes well, and this is a good place to start reading (or rereading) about Steinbeck." -- Scott Bradfield - The Spectator "A comprehensive new biography of Americas best-known novelist of the Great Depression arrives at a timely moment." -- 17 New Books to Watch For in October - The New York Times "Souders sympathy for Steinbeck is most effective and eloquent in his depiction of the California landscape or of the sea, which he describes as swimming with small pelagic crabs like a crimson carpet spread across an ocean the color of lapis lazuli"." -- Brenda Wineapple - The New York Times Book Review "Painstakingly researched, psychologically nuanced, unshowy, lucid... [ Souder] has brought a deeply human Steinbeck forth in all his flawed, melancholy, brilliant complication." -- Alex Kafka - The Washington Post "[ An] appreciative yet clear-eyed assessment." -- Wendy Smith - The Boston Globe
