“Shattering Illusions of a Benign World”—an April 17, 2020 Wall Street Journal book review by the writer Robert D. Kaplan—compares the Dust Bowl disaster depicted by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath with the contemporary calamity of COVID-19. Citing Steinbeck’s 1939 novel as “a powerful, inspiring story of human resilience in the face of unfathomable hardship” with a hard-but-hopeful lesson for the age of COVID-19, Kaplan praises Steinbeck’s masterpiece as “a book about how the natural environment seals human destiny, even while fathoming human character as has rarely been done in literature.” Other fans in high places are drawing similar conclusions. An April 25, 2020 AZcentral.com opinion piece by USA Today contributor Edward A. Pouzar—“Manhattan is the inferno of coronavirus”—finds encouragement for discouraged New Yorkers in “the unbelievable Joad hope which helped the family move forward each day” in their flight from Dust Bowl Oklahoma to Depression-era California. Taken together, the two articles are another reminder of John Steinbeck’s remarkable reputation for relevance beyond the classroom, particularly with readers from the worlds of business and politics. Kaplan, a former foreign affairs reporter for The Atlantic and the author of 19 books of travel and political analysis, is a managing director at the Eurasia Group, a global consulting business that evaluates political risk for private clients. Pouzar is director of risk management for Deloitte’s consulting business in New York, the city Steinbeck once described as the only place he could live after California.
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