Presents

From the Author: Michael Kenneth Hemp

CANNERY ROW, The History of John Steinbeck's Old Ocean View Avenue and Its Connections to the Pacific Northwest    First published in 1986, this history of  California's world-famous sardine fishing and canning industry was conceived with the goal of providing a comprehensive overview of the historical origins of "The Sardine Capital of the World" but not simply a history of the evolution of its fishing and canning industry.    It is a record of the multi-cultural history of immigration and settlement in Native American and Mexican Monterey by American, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Sicilian, Norwegian, and Filipino nationalities in the evolution and development of Monterey's world-famous sardine era.    It is also a record of old Ocean View Avenue as the stage upon which John Steinbeck populated one of the most iconic American literary works of all time in his 1945 "Cannery Row."    It is also the most advanced publication of the largely unheralded record of the life and scientific accomplishments of local marine biologist Ed Ricketts who revolutionized biological sciences while developing his presentation of Ecology in 1939 with the Stanford University Press publication of "Between Pacific Tides"–which is still in use today in studies of marine biology.     This is the first history book to present the previously uncompiled host of maritime legacies and interconnections between Cannery Row and the Pacific Northwest, to include the shared literary history of John Steinbeck, the Sea of Cortez, and the saga of the Western Flyer.    It was the spectacular diversity of conditions and species of the inter-tidal shorelines and tide pools of the maritime Pacific Northwest that drove Ed Ricketts to travel over a thousand miles nearly every spring and summer of the 1930s to operate from Hoodsport on Washington's Hood Canal that provided major contributions to his development and presentation of ecology to the world. After WW II Ed returned his attention to the Pacific Northwest until his untimely death in 1948.    This book, first published in 1986 was expanded in 2019 to incorporate the only chronicle of these amazing connections. As Ed Ricketts might say, "It's a whole new tide pool."

Published by The History Company

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