John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902 to John and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck in Salinas, a small town in Northern California. Steinbeck read widely as a young man and was most influenced by Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur. In 1919 he graduated from Salinas High School and then went to Sanford University, but although he studied hard, he left without graduating. Later, in 1925, Steinbeck moved to New York where he worked for a newspaper called the New York American. He wasn't good at reporting because he was always focused on what he was writing, so he returned to California to work on a ship. Steinbeck later found work in Nevada as a janitor where he wrote and produced an adventure story in 1929. A year later he married a woman named Carol Henning and they both moved and settled in Pacific Grove, California. The first three books Steinbeck wrote went largely unnoticed. The first to be noticed was Tortilla Flat. Tortilla Flat was Steinbeck's first book to become a film and he received $3000 for the film rights. That money had lifted him from being so poor during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Years later, in 1939, John Steinbeck wrote a book called The Grapes of Wrath which is among the "100 Greatest Books of All Time." The Grapes of Wrath took place during the Great Depression. Many Americans loved it and many didn't. California farmers hated him because he said things about them. Thus First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt called for “congressional hearings on conditions in migrant worker camps.” Steinbeck went around the places, asking what life was like there and what the farm workers did. He was disgusted and hated all the suffering and heartbreak he had witnessed. So St… middle of the paper… a voice with people who had no say in the stories The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. Many people had said that Steinbeck's works were crude or lacking in good taste. He never liked being in public and all the criticism annoyed him, but it never distracted him from the commitment of his works. Today, John Steinbeck still remains one of the most popular and respected American authors of the 19th century. WORK SITE Bloom, Harold. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1996. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Network. February 25, 2014. Shmoop editorial team. "The grapes of wrath." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., Nov. 11, 2008. Web. Feb. 25, 2014.Coers, Donald V. John Steinbeck as Propagandist: Moon Down Goes to War. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Network. February 26. 2014.