John Steinbeck allowing Steinbeck to spend a full day on the set of "The Grapes of Wrath" and the next day on the set of "Of Mice and Men." In the 1930s and 1940s, Ed Ricketts strongly influenced Steinbeck's writing. Steinbeck frequently took small trips with Ricketts along the California coast to give himself time off from his writing and to collect biological specimens, which Ricketts sold for a living. Their joint book about a collecting expedition to the Gulf of California in 1940, which was part travelogue and part natural history, published just as the U.S. entered World War II, never
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