Additional Text
John Steinbeck knew and understood America and Americans better than any other writer of the twentieth century. A man whose work was equal to the great social issues that drove him.

Author Information
John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in Salinas, California, and grew up in a fertile agricultural valley about twenty-five miles from the Pacific coast. Both the valley and the coast would serve as the backdrop for some of his best novels. In 1919, he attended Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 without a degree. For the next five years, he earned a living as a laborer and journalist in New York City while working on his first novel, Cup of Gold.

After marrying and moving to the Pacific.