The Ghost of Tom Joad guitar work and the lyrics on many of the tracks are a somber reflection of life in the mid-1990s in America and Mexico. The character of Tom Joad entered the American consciousness in John Steinbeck’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Grapes of Wrath", set against the economic hardships of the Great Depression. This spawned a film version starring Henry Fonda, which in turn inspired folk singer Woody Guthrie to pen "The Ballad of Tom Joad". The album's release was followed by Springsteen's solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, which ran from 1995 to 1997 and consisted of mostly small
The Golovlyov Family The Golovlyov Family The Golovlyov Family () is a novel by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, written in the course of five years, first published in 1880 by Alexey Suvorin's publishing house, and generally regarded as the author's magnum opus. The novel is divided into 7 chapters. The first five were initially published as a series of short stories, part of a cycle called "The Well-Meant Speeches" (Благонамеренные речи, 1875–1876) in "Otechestvennye Zapiski". In 1876 Saltykov-Shchedrin united all the parts into one novel and added two more chapters to it, which appeared in the same magazine. The revised version of the novel came