John Steinbeck (February 27, 1902—December 20, 1968) was one of the best-known an most widely read American writers of the 20th century. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939 and the novel Of Mice and Men, published in 1937. In all, he wrote twenty-five books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and several collections of short stories. In 1962 Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature.