John (Earnest) Steinbeck (1902–1968), winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize for literature, was born in Monterey County, California, and spent much of his life there. His studies of marine biology at Stanford University are reflected in nonfiction works such as Sea of Cortez (1941) and novels such as Cannery Row (1945), The Pearl (1947), and Sweet Thursday (1954). Most of Steinbeck's many novels and short stories reflect his lifelong concern for the plight of the poor, and especially that of migrant workers. Tortilla Flat (1935) is a fictional study of the lives of Mexican Americans from Monterey. Dubious Battle (1936) treats political issues surrounding striking California fruit harvesters. The Grapes of Wrath (1939), often considered Steinbeck's masterpiece, tells the story of a family that flees the Oklahoma Dust Bowl for California. There, as migrant workers, the family encounters shocking exploitation and extreme poverty. Again and again in his fiction, Steinbeck returned to the theme of exploitation. His sympathies lay always with the common people—workers, the poor, and the dispossessed. Another common theme in Steinbeck's fiction is the relationship between humans and nature. His stories often tell of the gifts of nature and of natural disasters, and deal with the reactions of fallible people—themselves products of nature—to nature and to natural events outside their control.