Edward F. Ricketts co-authored several books, among them Between Pacific Tides (1939), now in its fifth, revised edition and still regarded as the definitive ecological handbook on the California littoral. Katharine A. Rodger is editor of Renaissance Man of Cannery Row: The Life and Letters of Edward F. Ricketts (2002). Susan F. Beegel, editor of The Hemingway Review, coedited Steinbeck and the Environment (1997).

"To have begun to know Ed Ricketts even a little - whether as the satyr-god of Cannery Row, pioneering ecologist and marine biologist, magical Steinbeck character, co-author of a classic 'voyage of discovery,' or legendary friend and mentor of the great - is to want to know more." - From the foreword by Susan F. Beegel, editor of The Hemingway Review "This biography and collection is invaluable for those seeking to understand all about Ed Ricketts, not as Steinbeck's "Doc," but as the complex, visionary thinker and scientist that he was." - William F. Gilly, Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University"

• Acknowledgments Foreword Editor's Note Introduction 1. Foreword to the 1925 Pacific Biological Laboratories Catalog 2. "Zoological Introduction" to Between Pacific Tides 3. The Philosophy of "Breaking Through" 4. A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry 5. Essay on Non-teleological Thinking 6. Verbatim Transcription of Notes of Gulf of California Trip 7. Thesis and Materials for a Script on Mexico 8. "Outline and Conspectus" for a Book on the Mandated Islands 9. Transcript of Summer 1945 and 1946 Notes Based on Trips to the Outer Shores 10. Investigator Blames Industry, Nature for Shortage Epilogue Living at the Lab with My Father Memoir by Ed Ricketts Jr. Early Days: Nicknames and Such Memoir by Nancy Ricketts Works Cited Index