John Steinbeck with "Tortilla Flat" (1935), a novel set in post-war Monterey, California, that won the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal. It portrays the adventures of a group of classless and usually homeless young men in Monterey after World War I, just before U.S. prohibition. They are portrayed in ironic comparison to mythic knights on a quest and reject nearly all the standard mores of American society in enjoyment of a dissolute life devoted to wine, lust, camaraderie and petty theft. In presenting the 1962 Nobel Prize to Steinbeck, the Swedish Academy cited "spicy and comic tales about a gang of "paisanos",
John Harris (author) John Harris (author) John Harris (born 1949) is an American author, best known for Numerican Nation: A Self Portrait, in which he chronicles the first thirty years of his life and his views on United States politics from the perspective of the descendants of slavery. Harris was born in Camden, South Carolina. He moved to Mount Vernon, New York in 1958. He graduated from Mount Vernon High School, then continued on to Central Connecticut State University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in Political Science. He later earned his M.S. in Organizational Behavior from the University of Hartford. He is