John Steinbeck magazine, Steinbeck went to Vietnam to report on the war. He thought of the Vietnam War as a heroic venture and was considered a hawk for his position on the war. His sons served in Vietnam before his death, and Steinbeck visited one son in the battlefield. At one point he was allowed to man a machine-gun watch position at night at a firebase while his son and other members of his platoon slept. In May 1948, Steinbeck returned to California on an emergency trip to be with his friend Ed Ricketts, who had been seriously injured when a train
John Steinbeck Award Grapes of Wrath" and captures the writer's enduring legacy as an engaged and socially aware artist. From the 1930s on Steinbeck wrote about "the people," his heart open to the longing, loneliness, despair and triumph of those on the edges. Americans were his people, and his last book, "America and Americans" (1966) expresses his enduring love for a democratic nation. Thomas Steinbeck wrote that the awardee is a "planetary patriot," which means, a person who, in keeping with Maurice Steinbeck's understanding of the highest aspirations of an artist, "stands up against the stones of condemnation, and speaks for those who