The Log from the Sea of Cortez Publisher: Penguin Classics; Reprint edition

In 1940 John Steinbeck sailed in a sardine boat with his great friend the biologist Edward F. Ricketts to collect marine invertebrates from the beaches of the Gulf of California. This expedition was described by the two men in SEA OF CORTEZ, published in 1941. The day-to-day story of the trip is given in the LOG, which combines science, philosophy, and high-spirited adventure. This edition includes Steinbeck's profile of his collaborator, Ed Ricketts. There is more of the whole man, John Steinbeck, in SEA OF CORTEZ than in any of his novels. This is at once the record of a serious biological expedition and of the impact of a biologist and a novelist upon each other's minds - a kind of human sociology. The best of Steinbeck is in it - the mellowest and the crotchetiest.