William Souder’s Life of John Steinbeck Finalist for Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Since its founding 140 years ago in December, the Los Angeles Times—the largest-circulation U.S. daily published west of the Mississippi—developed a reputation for in-depth reporting and colorful editorializing on local subjects of national interest, such as immigration and labor unrest, which preoccupied John Steinbeck from 1935, when the paper’s book critic, Wilbur Needham, became a personal friend and much-needed ally. This history makes the March 3, 2021 announcement that William Souder’s Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck is a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist welcome news for fans of Steinbeck’s fiction and Souder’s biography. Other nominees in the same category are recently published lives of Eleanor Roosevelt, Sylvia Plath, Andy Warhol, and Malcom X—welcome company for a book about an author who was defended by Mrs. Roosevelt (for The Grapes of Wrath) and known (like the others) for the slightly mad emotion expressed in the title of Souder’s superbly written work.