John Steinbeck Library funding, saved the library. Had the libraries closed, Salinas would have been the largest city in the United States without a library. John Steinbeck Library The John Steinbeck Library is a public library in Salinas, California. The library was named after writer John Steinbeck in 1969. The library held the Steinbeck archives until 1998 when they were transferred to the new National Steinbeck Center. The library made national headlines in 2004 and 2005 when it, along with the two other libraries in Salinas, were on the verge of closing because of insufficient funding. In 2005, a nationally covered read-in drew
John Steinbeck too sympathetic to the workers' plight and too critical of capitalism, but found a large audience of its own. It won both the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction (novels) and was adapted as a film starring Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell and directed by John Ford. Steinbeck deals with the nature of good and evil in this Salinas Valley saga. The story follows two families: the Hamiltons – based on Steinbeck's own maternal ancestry – and the Trasks, reprising stories about the Biblical Adam and his progeny. The book was published in 1952. It was made into