The Log from the Sea of Cortez

by John Steinbeck, Richard Astro (Introduction)

A Penguin ClassicIn the two years after the 1939 publication of Steinbeck’s masterful The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck and his novel increasingly became the center of intense controversy and censorship. In search of a respite from the national stage, Steinbeck and his close friend, biologist Ed Ricketts, embarked on a month long marine specimen-collecting expedition in the Gulf of California, which resulted in their collaboration on the Sea of Cortez. In 1951, after Ricketts’ death, Steinbeck reissued his narrative portion of the work in memory of his friend and the inspiration for Cannery Row’s “Doc”. This exciting day-by-day account of their journey together is a rare blend of science, philosophy, and high-spirited adventure. This edition features an introduction by Richard Astro.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Genres: Nonfiction, Classics, Travel, Science, Nature, Memoir, Biography

324 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

John Ernst Steinbeck was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". He has been called "a giant of American letters."
During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward F. Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. By the 75th anniversary of its publishing date, it had sold 14 million copies.
Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.

Reviews

[Henry Avila · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the Sea of Cortez, a much more exotic name (also known as the Gulf of California) seemingly the ideal place for an expedition in marine specimen- gatherings, both John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts need to escape modern life the 1940 version, women trouble. Mr. Ricketts a renowned marine biologist without a degree is the expert, Mr. Steinbeck the famous writer the money man, they hire a sardine boat at Monterey in the Golden State, the 77 -foot Western Flyer, with a colorful crew of four, keep this between us, Steinbeck's wife Carol is the unmentioned seventh member, she will soon shed that title. This narrative may be sometimes dull, too repetitive, ( written unofficially by Mr. Rickets the professional ) when the focus is on obscure species found under rocks and dry beaches during ebb tides, weird creatures unknown to the general public, thousands of them brought back home, which is the reason the book was unsuccessful. However the beauty of the gulf's largely uninhabited shores then , the sparkling blue waters and skies, the tantalizing islands viewed, some the crew landed on and explored, the fish happily jumping out of the warm sea , poor, quiet Indians in their small primitive
canoes visiting the boat, the friendly Mexicans in the Sun drenched little cities welcoming the strangers, millions or billions of living organisms floating, swimming , flying or crawling on both coasts, the Baja California peninsula is 775 miles long, the men on the vessel enjoying each other's company for six weeks and their risque stories, they become comfortable together as the crew, Tony, Sparky, Tiny, Tex, along with John and Ed carefully navigate the lethal shores, full of hidden rocks, treacherous shoals, dangerous currents, high winds, storms that threaten the equilibrium and ; yes it's good to be ...obviously penned by the master John Steinbeck. A mixed bag... those lovers of the sea who I am one will like, but the casual reader or the people that demand a continuous plot from point A to Z... not for them, very technical in spots, even boring yet the jewels will be uncovered and the the treasure discovered by the patient.. . Footnote the great friends had planned another exciting voyage, this time to the remote, freezing Aleutian Islands of Alaska in 1948, a big contrast from the hot deserts of Baja, fate prevented this though by Mr. Ricketts demise in a tragic traffic accident, and Steinbeck's tribute written as a introduction in this book is quite moving, the unstated sadness prevails through the pages of what might have been.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do you ever catch yourself smiling like an idiot when you're reading something pleasurable? Well, my smile muscles hurt.

The log begins with an introduction Steinbeck wrote, "About Ed Ricketts," after his travel companion from the journey chronicled here died. It's gorgeous! What a fascinating man he was!! I had just read Cannery Row, and Ricketts inspired the character of Doc, so I was happy to learn about him, or at least what could be related to me in 50 pages or so. Steinbeck mentions that after his death, the people of Cannery Row tried to define him. Of those he heard, half-Christ and half-goat was the description that he liked best.

There really needs to be a movie about Steinbeck and Ricketts. Someone do that. It would be so lushly beautiful, whether they're communing over (many) beers in Doc's laboratory in Monterey, or sailing into shallow wade pools along the Gulf of Mexico or having one of their four-day long parties, where nobody went to bed except for "romantic purposes." I know that there is a movie version of Cannery Row, but it wouldn't have John Steinbeck in it. And it wouldn't have this trip in it! No, Steinbeck says in the introduction that Ricketts was his closest friend for eighteen years. I want to watch them being friends.

An essential scene would be when they were allowed onto a large commercial Japanese shrimping dredge in Mexico that, to Steinbeck and Ricketts' horror, simply scraped the ocean floor of absolutely every speck of life, then dumped everything that wasn't shrimp, now lifeless, back into the bay. Ricketts and Steinbeck stared at vast collection of fish, sharks, anemones, rays, corals and seahorses being tossed back into the sea for the gulls. All that knowledge, all that food, wasted! An entire ecosystem wiped out. And, in true form to the way Steinbeck honors even the most miserable lech in his fiction, he loved these men working on the Japanese shrimping dredge! Loved them! He said, "they were good men, but they were caught in a large, destructive machine, good men doing a bad thing." He promised to send them a fine volume of crustacean biology when he returned to Monterey.

The missing star is only absent because, after reading the introduction, I expected the same intimate, personal style to be woven into the log, throughout, and it wasn't really so. It was still a narrative, and many of their adventures and conversations and struggles were described, but just not in the same casual manner. I know this wasn't that sort of book, but god, it could have been! Okay, I already feel guilty being (just a titch) fussy about this, because what this book is is just great. I'll stop being a whiner. I just wanted more Doc. In the intro I learned that Ricketts had such an affection for marine worms that he called girls he liked (and there were many), "wormy" as a term of endearment. So you can see why I wanted more.

Now, you like Steinbeck, but are still unsure if you want to read this nonfiction account of tide pool specimen-gathering? Here is how you will know for sure that it is for you. Do you love lists of captivating and beautiful and sexy-as-hell, sciency words? Here is just one of the many lists describing some of their catches to help you decide:

"One huge, magnificent murex snail...so camouflaged with little plants, corallines, and other algae that it could not be told from the reef itself...rock oysters were there, and oysters; limpets and sponges; corals of two types; peanut worms; sea-cucumbers, and many crabs, particularly some disguised in dresses of growing algae...many worms, including our enemy Eurythoe, which stings so badly. The coral clusters were violently inhabited by snapping shrimps, red smooth crabs and little fuzzy black and white spider crabs."

And don't think that it's all lists and clinical talk! He had a way of finishing off each chapter with a lucid and dreamy bit of philosophy or reflection:

"This little trip of ours was becoming a thing and a dual thing, with collecting and eating and sleeping merging with the thinking-speculating activity. Quality of sunlight, blueness and smoothness of water, boat engines, and ourselves were all parts of a larger whole and we could begin to feel its nature but not its size."

Another chapter ends with his defense of drunkenness, another with a defense of laziness and another with a cry about the depletion of our natural resources and another with the beauty of scooping fish while you sail and dropping them directly into a pan of hot oil, eating hundred of the delicious and salty things with friends in the moonlight. This book is just so pretty. If you don't watch out, Steinbeck will make you love the world.

[Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the summer of 1940 John Steinbeck set out on a boat with a small crew to travel down the West coast to the Gulf of California. Their mission was to explore the intertidal zones and document the various species of animal life they encountered. They stopped occasionally in port cities of various sizes and also came to learn more about the Mexican people they met along the way. In this travelogue set over the 6 weeks or so in which the expedition took place, Steinbeck philosophizes, describes, entertains, eulogizes, and more.

He can't help himself but extrapolate from the microcosms of the marine life and apply these learnings to observations about humanity, especially an America in the early days leading up to WWII. And that is what makes this book so great. Steinbeck is obviously a skilled writer, but it's his power of observation and then his ability to take that idea, however small or miniscule it might seem, and expand it into something universal. Along the way, it's somehow not diluted. It feels almost *more* powerful because it's so relatable. And despite having never visited the areas which he is describing or having not spent over a month on a small fishing vessel with a rowdy crew collecting, dissecting, preserving and observing marine life in this way, his takeaways feel personal even to the reader.

I tabbed the heck out of this book because it's so rich with ideas and yet its so concise in its delivery. There's also a beautiful elegy to his dear friend and conspirator, Ed Ricketts, in the back that readers of Cannery Row will appreciate and see parallels to. I loved this as much as I'd hoped, maybe even more so. If you enjoyed Travels with Charley than this feels like the next obvious step. Of course, consider how times have changed in both language and attitude, but also see in many ways Steinbeck, for his time, had a very progressive and worldly POV--even calling into judgment things that resonate so deeply with issues present in American politics today.

Sad to see how some things haven't changed at all, but comforting to know others have come before pondering the same issues and put pen to paper to try and work it out. At the very least he has left a trail of bread crumbs for readers in the future to follow to hopefully a more inevitable conclusion.

[Ken-ichi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure I've ever read another book that was so full of life, in every sense of the word. Steinbeck and Ricketts portray an existence and a philosophy that seem impossibly engaged, impossibly full, and it isn't long before you're there on the boat beside them, a can of beer in one hand and a dip net in the other, peering into blue shallows in search of strange and beautiful creatures.

It's bohemian (two guys charter a boat to go tidepooling around the Gulf of California, mostly for the hell of it), but rigorous (specimens are tediously labeled, filed, described). Despite one of them being a professional in the strictest sense, both Ricketts and Steinbeck are the best kind of amateurs, seeking knowledge and adventure for the pure joy and love they find in them. They're driven by a mission to describe the fauna of a relatively unexplored region, but that drive never consumes or defines them, or keeps them from swilling beer and philosophizing. Their humor and presence in their journey brought as much pleasure to read and inhabit as any escapist fantasy I can imagine.

The introduction breaks that fantasy a bit, describing how Steinbeck developed the book from journals that were not his own, and the complete omission of Steinbeck's wife Carol, who also sailed with them. Then again, the intro and Steinbeck's euology to Ricketts provide a realistic backdrop that grounds and encapsulates the joy of the trip, making it seem more attainable, and more true. You can never live aboard the Western Flyer, but you can always seek those kinds of moments.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Steinbeck documenting sea creatures?

​Oh yeah, and it's about as exciting as it sounds... Our boy Johnny and our old friend Doc load up the sardine boat and set sail for the Sea of Cortez. Our crew is a little rough, and there's a few hiccups along the way. But it's mostly a journal documenting the travel and the logging of sea creatures.

​Was it any good?

​Well, it was Steinbeck. So yeah, it was good, not great, but good. Ok, maybe not good, but definitely on the high side of ok. Johnny was one of, if not the foremost authors of our time, so as far as I'm concerned, he can write whatever the hell he wants.

​Why did you read it if it's just ok?

​Well, a few years ago, when I was younger, more handsome, and hadn't had my spirit broken by years of what can only be described as barely above indentured servitude to a company that specializes in soul-breaking, I was knee-deep in some of the greatest books I had ever read: The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, The Red Pony, and The Pearl, to name a few. I made a vow to myself. A sacred vow between me and the universe. I vowed that one day I would read all of the great John Ernst Steinbeck's works. I would read all the sacred texts penned by the master himself. Of course, as I went along and became more jaded, cynical, and angry, I realized that even the great Steinbeck, the master of all masters, the greatest wordsmith of his generation, the best American author to ever write in the land of the free—that even he, the chosen one, doesn't always write winners.

It's worth the time to read it, but definitely not John's best.

[Phillip Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the Western Flyers log written by John Steinbeck when it sailed on an expedition to collect samples of marine life in the bay of California or what he calls the sea of Cortez. This voyage taken with his friend Ed Ricketts has many scientific points that involves understanding what teleological thinking and the process of evolution on sea creatures. John Steinbeck also makes philosophical observations about American life and the lives of the native people encountered through the book. In high school I read Steinbeck's The Pearl that was based on a real story but the author in the Sea of Cortez sees it as unbelievable that someone could just throw away such a valuable pearl. Ed Ricketts is another inspiration for Steinbeck since the character of Doc in Cannery Row seems to be a carbon copy of him. What also impressed me is the native people of the Sea of Cortez are poorer than those in Cannery Row but don't engage in many criminal schemes to defraud others. I guess that Malcolm Gladwell was right in The Revenge of the Tipping Point that places have different overstories that make them different from each other. Overall this was a good book but it could have done without the metaphysics and the part on teleological thinking.

[Dax · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like to read a nonfiction book from a famous literary author from time to time. It can help me understand their psyche a little better, which can allow for a deeper appreciation for their fictional work. I did this with Salter as well.

'The Log from the Sea of Cortez' can be a bit of a snooze cruise from time to time, but the writing flashes occasionally and Steinbeck's sense of humor is evident almost throughout the entire narrative. His descriptions of people and place are interesting and well done, and those descriptions often lead to philosophical tangents that really allow the reader to get a glimpse of what Steinbeck was all about.

It's a good little book and I am glad that I read it. I plan is to revisit some Steinbeck over the next couple of years, so I think these little insights into the man himself will prove helpful in the future.

[Numidica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, I really did, because I love the sea, I like most of Steinbeck's writing, and I love sailing (or in this case, motoring), but I could not do it. There were way, way too many "Today we collected many annelid worms of the genus Chlotydia, along with many of the large red and black articulated brittle sea stars" type paragraphs in the main part of the book, and way too little good story telling to redeem the boring parts. Also, the book was written in 1940, and the moral relativism that Steinbeck exhibits with WWII raging in Europe and Asia is a little off-putting. Also, it was written in the era before humans realized they could in fact damage the planet with their wanton depredations, and the sheer scale of the killing of sea animals for collecting or sport by the crew does not age well as literature. The one part of this book that sparkles as some of Steinbeck's best writing can is the Appendix about Ed Ricketts. In my opinion, skip the rest and read the appendix.

One thing I did gain from wading manfully through Steinbeck's (overly) detailed descriptions of sea life is how much poorer we are now. He describes hordes of jumping swordfish, many, many huge manta rays, turtles, dolphins, etc seen from the deck of the boat. And these were daily events. I've done a fair amount of offshore sailing, and it's not that way now I can tell you, so Steinbeck's book is, in a sense, a record of a lost world.

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apr 9, 1115am ~~ Review asap.

Apr 10, 5pm ~~ I have read many of Steinbeck's fiction titles in the past, but I had never heard of this book until I stumbled across it while browsing my favorite online used bookseller. When I began to read, I became a little confused about timelines: when exactly the trip took place and what
was the actual publication date did not seem too clear to me.

But I did not research those questions until just now, when I found this at Wiki:
In the 1930s and 1940s, Ed Ricketts strongly influenced Steinbeck's writing. Steinbeck frequently took small trips with Ricketts along the California coast to give himself time off from his writing and to collect biological specimens, which Ricketts sold for a living. Their coauthored book, Sea of Cortez (December 1941), about a collecting expedition to the Gulf of California in 1940, which was part travelogue and part natural history, published just as the U.S. entered World War II, never found an audience and did not sell well. However, in 1951, Steinbeck republished the narrative portion of the book as The Log from the Sea of Cortez, under his name only (though Ricketts had written some of it). This work remains in print today.

That certainly settled my timeline questions. And helped explain why there was a long essay about Ricketts at the beginning of this book. Steinbeck was thorough in introducing the reader to his friend, and it became clear before I ever got to the 'log' that here was a friendship like very few of us are allowed to find in this world. There is nothing quite so wonderful as having someone to talk with who will understand us, stretch our horizons, make us think, and yet at the same time always accept us for who and how we are. This seemed to be the type of friendship these two men had. One of Ricketts' biographers even said that Steinbeck's writing suffered after Ricketts died in 1948. I don't know about that, but I can imagine the emptiness left after losing such a friend.

When it comes to the actual log, I was both surprised at it and annoyed by much of it. The purpose of the trip was to collect specimens of sea life from various tidal pools in the Sea Of Cortez, in between Baja California and mainland Mexico. Naturally this collecting meant forcing the sea creatures out of their homes and putting them through the process of pickling in formaldehyde. The amount of scooping up and killing they did was astounding and depressing, and I eventually began to skip the lists of which creatures they found where. I also could not understand how Steinbeck could not see the similarities between what he and his crew were doing on their little boat and what the Japanese crew of an ocean trawler were doing. He condemned their actions, and yet he disrupted the ecosystems of dozens of tidal pools and would not see that his own actions were nearly as destructive.

What surprised me were the many riffs into philosophy, where Steinbeck talked about his ideas about society, government, mankind, and many other topics. Probably, judging by that earlier essay, these were topics that were discussed many times between the two friends and most certainly on this boat trip, but the first few times they showed up they caught me off guard. What also caught me off guard was how often I agreed with Steinbeck's opinions. And how very little the world has changed since his time.

Remember that this edition was published in 1951. Towards the end of the book he says:
We in the United States have done so much to destroy our own resources, our timber, our land, our fishes that we should be taken as a horrible example and our methods avoided by any government and people enlightened enough to envision a continuing economy.

I will be reading more Steinbeck over the next three months. I had planned to re-read Cannery Row right after finishing this book, but I got distracted by another title in my Next pile. And then I got distracted again by a biography of Steinbeck that arrived the other day. So when I finish my current trip through Mexico City with Homero Aridjis, I will read the Steinbeck bio and then Cannery Row (Ed Ricketts was 'Doc' in that book) and go from there. I am curious to see how my older grumpier self reacts to the books I was so impressed with in my younger years. I also now have a few titles that I have never read, and I am very much looking forward to those as well.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again."
- John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez



This book was originally the idea of Steinbeck and his marine biologist/muse Ed Ricketts. They traveled from Monterey, CA down to Baja and collected flora and fauna throughout the Sea of Cortez (see Gulf of California). This is right before WWII started for the US and about 1.5 years before Japan pulled us into it, but the impending war is like a giant submerged whale that follows the Western Flyer down to Mexico and back.

It is told mostly in a first person, plural, supposedly the joint thoughts of Steinbeck and Ricketts, but mostly a narrative constructed by Steinbeck after reviewing his log/diary from the trip. The original book, Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research included the research and accounting of Ed Ricketts of all the items they collected. After Ed Ricketts died, his name was dropped as was the species catalogue. Steinbeck added a Eulogy for his dead friend, but the estate keep Rickett's name from the authorship.

I read this book as I drank Pain Killers and Margaritas in Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point), Mexico while recovering for a week after breaking a femur in May. It seemed an appropriate time to carefully place a toe back in the warm pool of Steinbeck's writing.

[BrokenTune · Rating 1 out of 5]

Late, late in the night we recalled that Horace says fried shrimps and African snails will cure a hangover. Neither was available.

I called a stop to this @ 63%. I skim read to the end to see if the log ever changes into something that has a structure - or a point.

It may be that I am not in the right mood for this book, but from everything I have read, I get the impression that to be in the right frame of mind to read this book I would have to be on that boat, with a beer (not the first of the day), and develop a sudden liking for pointless meandering, unsubstantiated general philosophising, and killing things just to collect them.

And I just can't.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Steinbeck. Pure and simple. He seems incapable of lapses in writing and has an uncanny ability to captivate his readers. Okay, he taps into an innate geographical bias. California born and bred, I relish visiting those locales around Monterey and the San Joaquin Valley that Steinbeck describes in his novels. Plus he attended Stanford (a decade or so after my grandparents and sixty years before moi), although he did not finish. For years I have devoured whatever I could find from Steinbeck (whose position in the library is right next to another great writer of the West, Wallace Stegner, but not far enough away from another author who represents the lowest form of literary composition ...a woman named Steele). But I held off reading this book for decades. I suspected it might read like a boring textbook on marine life featuring "Doc" aka Ed Ricketts, puttering around lagoons and tide pools. Au contraire. It's another Steinbeck classic ... plenty of low-life amusing characters straight our of Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row. Some irreverent political commentary. Lurid descriptions of natural beauty. You get a sense of Steinbeck's immersion in a wonderful, simplisitc culture where the beer flows liberally and the days move leisurely. Put the Sea of Cortez on that long list of places to see before you die.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book and there isn't any review that I could write that could do it justice. I enjoyed getting to know John Steinbeck and his friends. I enjoyed his philosophical dissertations about life. (Although, I will admit, there was one chapter that I did doze through.) Yes, it is interesting that we spend so much money on health care and so much money on war to kill us. Yes, I agree we spend so much on STUFF so that one neurotic generation raises another neurotic generation. It is also interesting that he wrote down these ideas around 1940 and so much of them seemed written in the present time.

I know very little about marine biology so pictures of these sea creatures they collected would really have helped. I love Steinbeck's straight-laced sense of humor that just permeates this book. I also am curious as to what the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) looks like nowadays. It seemed beautiful in this book.

I appreciate the afterword about Ed Ricketts, his marine biologist friend. After reading Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday, you gotta love Ed (Doc). That was a good ending to this book.

[Zora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, it meanders some, and yes, I felt as if I was ODing on testosterone from time to time (he edited his wife out of the text, though she was supposedly actually there on the trip), but there is so much gorgeous writing, I didn't care.

We felt rather as God would feel when, after all the preparation of Paradise, all the plannings for eternities of joy, all the making and tuning of harps, the street-paving with gold, and the writing of hosannas, at last He let in the bleacher customers and they looked at the heavenly city and wished to be again in Brooklyn

And now the wind grew stronger and the windows of houses along the shore flashed in the declining sun. The forward guy-wire of our mast began to sing under the wind, a deep and yet penetrating tone like the lowest string of an incredible bull-fiddle

The moment...of leave-taking is one of the pleasantest times in human experience, for it has in it a warm sadness without loss. People who don't ordinarily like you very well are overcome with affection...It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing....

It's all so vivid and smart and wry and lovely. It's humbling if you're any sort of writer to read this level of writing and yet you can't help but love it, and the love overwhelms your despair and shame and jealousy and it's all right in the end, because it's just so wonderful, and you'd rather live in a world that had Steinbeck than one that never did.

Probably a great book to listen to on audio.

[Jason Koivu · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is John Steinbeck on his relationship with Ed Ricketts. Steinbeck brings to bear his unique stylings to this account of a specimen gathering trip from Monterey Bay to Mexico. As he does, he breathes life into crustaceans and outboard motors alike, turning them into cognizant beings as wily and irascible as any human you know. My favorite part about reading this was discovering just how real "Doc" from Cannery Row apparently was. Steinbeck hardly had to fictionalization Ricketts at all to come up with his quirky scientist in one of his most memorable novels.

[M. Sarki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was especially taken with the last section found in the appendix that honored the life and death of Steinbeck's great friend Ed Ricketts. What a wonderful tribute to a person who meant so much to so many in that part of the country. The entire book was certainly an enjoyable and satisfying read. It was good to hear this voice again.

[Sylvester (Taking a break in 2023) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone with even a minor interest in marine biology, or the more likely interest in Ed Ricketts (see "Cannery Row" and "Sweet Thursday"),or a personal weakness for tooling around in boats with friends (see "The Wind In the Willows" Kenneth Grahame - Ratty to Mole: "Believe me, my friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.")will like this book. It's not "Grapes of Wrath" mind you, it's soaking wet and as different as you can get. It's more like "The Kon-Tiki Expedition" by Thor Heyerdahl, in fact, I recommend that book to anyone who likes this one.

John Steinbeck was a fascinating man, not just an amazing writer. He was interested in the world around him, and he knew how to translate that world into words. One passage, I wish I could find it, tells how there are some flatworms that are so delicate that they can't be removed from the sand without destroying them and if you want to collect one, you have to put your bucket next to it and hope it crawls in - and he directly relates this to how delicate the truth can be, that sometimes it is so subtle that it can't be told without destroying it. Steinbeck the writer and Steinbeck the marine biologist are one and the same - and this is one of his best books.

[Jessaka · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was so boring. I was not going to sit and read how they collected sea specimens along the coast of baja, so i skipped over those parts, which were boring anyway. Also Ed's life at the beginning of the book was boring, but I also didn't like his collecting cats to kill. About all I got out of it was enjoying his speaking with the natives when on shore, but those tales were not enough to keep me interested. I wanted a sea adventure like Paddle to the Amazon, which I could not put down. And yet the books of John Steinbeck that I did love caused me to order all of his books in 4 volumes with my favorites being Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, and Tortilla Flats. Oh, tell me that he has other good books since I have them all.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

A well written book on a terribly boring subject. Why Steinbeck thought this was a good use of his skills is beyond me. The prologue ("About Ed Ricketts") is at least somewhat amusing, though hardly compelling. If Ed were a friend of mine, it would have been fascinating. But Ed is (was) not a friend mine, nor are the lobsters and starfish which Steinbeck describes with inexplicable fascination. The book contains some philosophy, which might be interesting and challenging for someone whose intellectual development fossilized at Herbert Hoover's Republicanism. Today, it's just a verbose curio.

[Jerome Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘In 1940 John Steinbeck sailed in a sardine boat, Western Flyer, with his great friend the biologist Edward F. Ricketts to collect marine invertebrates from the beaches of the Gulf of California. This expedition was described by the two men in The Sea of Cortez, published in 1941. The day-to-day story of the trip is given in the Log, which combines science, philosophy, and high spirited adventure. This edition includes Steinbeck’s profile of his collaborator, “About Ed Ricketts.”’

The best of Steinbeck is in this tale; his superb narrative, descriptions, insights, poetic philosophy, and of course his humor. His account of the vast variety of species was textbook but deeply interesting. The characters he ventured with were a colorful lot showing tenacity, superstition, and the freewheeling carefree behavior of 1940 sailors. Their individual names added a personal touch no doubt;note, Sparky, Tiny, Tex, and Tony.

I enjoyed how Steinbeck added his bohemian philosophy much like a few other books have done. For example: Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”; “Walden’s Pond” by Thoreau’; “Kon-Tiki” by Thor Heyerdahl. These books along with the “Log” seem to depict a bohemian style of wind in the face, sunshine on the shoulders, and the searching for deeper, yet, simple truth what bohemian want-a-bee’s call “the golden days in the June of life”; when the love of a modestly elusive Truth seemed more glorious, incomparably, than the lust for the ways of the flesh and the dross of the world!

I especially enjoyed Steinbeck’s philosophical take on laziness and his somber romanticizing on how the great world dropped away from them quickly; its clamor, its danger, and its demands. Remember it was a time when a good portion of the world was at war! It engaged me. After finishing the book and staring at it for a time, daydreaming, I suddenly got this tremendous urge to pack in my typewriter and bedroll, kiss the loved ones goodbye and head for the Gulf of California; just to relive what the crew of the Western Flyer experienced; and perhaps, induce a few experiences of my own. If you like to take to the sea, road, or air, in an adventure book, I highly recommend this awesome read.

[Chrisl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steinbeck drew me into his worlds. Only vaguely remember appreciating this trip, wanting to experience that component of Mexico.
How is the Sea different now from Steinbeck's time there?
What would have Mexico's NW been like for the first explorers coming south from Beringia, perhaps 15,000 years ago, paddling around Cabo, heading north for the mouth of the Colorado ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Log...

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thank the streets of Brooklyn for my discarded copy of "The Log of the Sea of Cortez" which enthralled me with John Steinbeck's homespun wisdom, his deep love of humanity, and his trust in the balance of things, even as he sees so much of what's wrong with the world. Not quite memoir, not quite scientific journal, Steinbeck's recounting of an expedition to collect samples of sea life in Mexico is rich with philosophy while the appendix must be one of the most bromantic eulogies in American letters.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent ecology/scientific exploration/adventure book. I love Steinbeck and really enjoyed spending time upon the ship, The Western Flyer, with him and the crew. The humorous and intelligent tone reminds me of Bill Bryson, who I am sure has read this book... Every short chapter is engaging, beautiful, and brilliant.

[John Lanka · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐️3.5

This one would have been rated a little bit higher had there not been so much of the scientific and philosophical talk intertwined.

Of course this is a book about Marine Biology so the scientific talk is part of the deal, but I felt the best parts of the book were the narratives of the daily lives of the crew and the stories of the people they met along the journey who helped them, socialized with them, and inspired them.

Cool to see where he got the idea for The Pearl.

Next Steinbeck On Deck: East of Eden

[Malum · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

Travels with Charley at sea.

Not my favorite Steinbeck, but he had some deep thoughts here and his prose was on point. It's also interesting because we learn a lot about Steinbeck's best friend Ed Ricketts.

[Christine Boyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ugh, having a hard time rating this. Was just reading some of the 2-star reviews. Someone said, "a well-written book on a terribly boring subject". There were paragraphs in there that warranted 5 stars. But there were also moments where if it wasn't Steinbeck I would have thrown 1 star at it!

Let's put this in a nutshell - or maybe I should say "seashell" - ha ha. In all fairness, the forward in this 1995 addition says that the book really was a combination of ideas and daily records from both Steinbeck and his good companion on this trip, marine biologist Ed Ricketts. So maybe some of the dry parts were Ricketts' doing? In any case, it was a log, and a log can be boring. I don't think I could handle another mention of the daily catch of anemones, sponges, crabs, tunicates, and urchins. However, I loved the descriptions of the small crew: Tiny, Tex, Sparky, & Capt. Tony. I also loved the geography details of the Gulf of California and little bays and coves along the Mexican coast. I was fascinated to learn more about Steinbeck's own worldview when he discussed some of their deeper philosophical moments aboard the boat, but some of the notions were way "out there" and may have been influenced by beverage. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing! But makes for rambling and incoherence at times.

Steinbeck's friend died in a car accident a few years after their expedition. Afterwards, Steinbeck wrote a beautiful piece about him which is included in the appendix of the book. The book is almost worth the read just for those few pages. I read some woman's review that she found Steinbeck's honest portrayal of his friend, "appalling" for its openness. How wrong she is - we should all be so lucky to have a friend like Steinbeck who not only knew every nuance about his friend, but was able to capture him in such moving and sincere prose.

[Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is full of science about aquatic life. It is filled with information that only sailors might understand, and it is more of a journal than a book. It doesn't feel polished. And yet it is wonderful! And I think it is wonderful because it is told with so much love and respect. For the reader it feels like a journey that John is thrilled to be on and equally happy to share. It feels a bit like a love letter to his friend Ed Ricketts. Cannery Row just moved higher up my TBR list!

I have become a huge fan of John Steinbeck over the past few weeks and each book I read solidifies that more for me. I am a fan of the writer and of the man. His books make me feel like I know him -- and I like the man I know. I wish I could have known the man in the real world. He tells the story of Americana with love and respect but never shies away from the hardships.

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is a strong, solid 4.5 stars.

[Russ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had to read this for an ecology course on the Sea of Cortez. In the class we talked a lot about observational science and used Rickett's and Steinbeck's descriptions of the marine life they encountered on this trip as examples. Now-a-days scientists often quaff at the idea of including observational data in their research, but I feel that these descriptions help the reader get a good sense of how things appeared to the writer at the time. Science shouldn't be just all data and numbers. Plus it makes the reading a lot more enjoyable.

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

Appendix about Ricketts is an essential bonus of the book. I'm unsure who (between Steinbeck and Ricketts) contribute more to this book. I'm with them both without reservation. I enjoy the lengthy details (well, I was a marine biologist student) to tackle my memory and loosely narrated mystic tales to feed my imagination. But enlightening the mind (without losing humor) is what I treasure the most that make this book unique.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I dont know why, but this book captivates me. Maybe because I long to be on a vessel wandering the coast....in the past, right before the huge explosion that has so populated and devastated the western seaboard. Seeing Monteray before the big hotels went up must of been a real hoot too...Especially after reafding Cannery Row..Steinbeck just nails it.