Lower-case utopia

Qualities of humility, compassion, and togetherness flow in and out of John Steinbeck’s stories. His characters wrestle with moral choices: family vs. community, blame vs. responsibility, and the duties to self vs. others.

Yet Steinbeck’s optimism shattered when he visited New Orleans and saw bigotry firsthand. The racist screams he described as “bestial and filthy and degenerate.” The crazed obscenity, he writes, filled him with “shocked and sickened sorrow.”

Edited by Stephen K. George, The Moral Philosophy of John Steinbeck nudges readers to ask questions about a good society.