John Steinbeck, born in Salinas, California, in 1902, grew up in a fertile agricultural valley, about 25 miles from the Pacific Coast. Both the valley and the coast would serve as settings for some of his best fiction. In 1919 he went to Stanford University, where he intermittently enrolled in literature and writing courses until he left in 1925 without taking a degree. During the next five years he supported himself as a laborer and journalist in New York City, all the time working on his first novel,Β Cup of GoldΒ (1929). After marriage and a move to Pacific Grove, he published two California books,Β The Pastures of HeavenΒ (1932) andΒ To a God UnknownΒ (1933), and worked on short stories later collected inΒ The Long ValleyΒ (1938). Popular success and financial security came only withΒ Tortilla FlatΒ (1935), stories about Montereyβs paisanos. A ceaseless experimenter throughout his career, Steinbeck changed courses regularly. Three powerful novels of the late 1930s focused on the California laboring class:Β In Dubious BattleΒ (1936),Β Of Mice and MenΒ (1937), and the book considered by many his finest,Β The Grapes of WrathΒ (1939).Β The Grapes of WrathΒ won both theΒ National Book AwardΒ and theΒ Pulitzer PrizeΒ in 1939.Steinbeck received theΒ Nobel Prize in LiteratureΒ in 1962, and, in 1964, he was presented with theΒ United States Medal of FreedomΒ by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Steinbeck died in New York in 1968. Today, more than 30 years after his death, he remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures.
Gary Sinise is an award-winning actor who is best known for his role as Lieutenant Dan Taylor in Forrest Gump, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. He also won acclaim for his work in Of Mice and Men, Apollo 13, Truman (Golden Globe Award), and George Wallace (Emmy Award). He has narrated several books by John Steinbeck, including Of Mice and Men and Travels with Charley in Search of America.