Steinbeck's green mentor.

In the 1930s self-taught marine biologist Ed Ricketts led pioneering investigations of the Pacific coastline. Now, journalist Eric Enno Tamm uses pictures and letters to uncover the story of the great field ecologist in Beyond The Outer Shores: "The Untold Odyssey of Ed Ricketts, the Pioneering Ecologist Who Inspired John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell (Four Walls Eight Windows, $26). Naturalist Ed Ricketts, rendered immortal as the character "Doc" in Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row, traveled the Pacific coast collecting samples and studying tide pools. These journeys were the basis of an ecological trilogy coauthored with Steinbeck, the last of which, The Outer Shores, was not completed because of the scientist's death in 1948. As you read this book you will understand why Steinbeck admired Ricketts so greatly that the naturalist's ecological themes run through almost all of his novels.