John Steinbeck, the author of East of Eden, is often considered one of the greatest American writers to date. Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902 in Salinas (the setting of East of Eden). Steinbeck attended Stanford university in 1925 until he dropped out in order to pursue his career of becoming a writer. Despite the struggling conditions of the Great Depression, Steinbeck was able to achieve surprising success with one of his early works titled Tortilla Flat. Other famous works of Steinbeck include Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and of course East of Eden. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for his work The Grapes of Wrath and Steinbeck later went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Steinbeck died in 1968 due to heart disease, but his impact and legacy that he left on American literature continues to live on.