Although best-known for his fiction, John Steinbeck also enjoyed a long career as a non-fiction writer. The author of this study of his non-fiction works asserts that they contain much autobiographical material from which it is possible to construct a full account of his life. In this text, the author uses Steinbeck’s non-fiction writings as a basis for judging his relationship to the non-fiction novels and works of a new journalism which began to appear after World War II.