John Ernst Steinbeck

(February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) is one of the best known and most widely read American writers of the 20th century. A winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, he is best known for his novella Of Mice and Men (1937) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), both of which examine the lives of the working class and the migrant worker during the Great Depression.

John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California and situated struggling, disadvantaged people at the center of his stories. His characters and his stories drew on real historical conditions and events in the first half of the 20th century. His body of work reflects his wide range of interests, including marine biology, jazz, politics,philosophy, history, and myth.

John Steinbeck's writings and characters are a window into the essential aspects of humanity: conflict, grief, fear, and the struggle that humanity has with itself. When students research Steinbeck's version of history and humanity, geography and politics, they see where America came from, who the people were, and how they have grown, what in the world has changed, and what remains. Very few pictures in American literature are as vivid as those depicted by John Steinbeck. History is no longer diluted with simple facts and dates, but rather becomes an intimate, uncertain journey full of neglected characters, their harrowing experiences, and the future's promise that urges them onward.