The Grapes of Wrath is generally considered Steinbeck's masterpiece, but the short novel was the form he most frequently turned to and most consciously theorized about, and with constant experimentation he made the form his own. Much of the best-and the worst-of his writing appears in his short novels. This collection reviews what has been categorized as the "good" and the "bad," looking beyond the careless labeling that has characterized a...