Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man'. Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in financial and agricultural industries. Due to their nearly hopeless situation and in part because they were trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with thousands of other 'Okie', they sought jobs, land, dignity, and a future. Steinbeck was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1940 for this novel.

First edition, first printing; 8vo; unmarked internally; publisher's pictorial beige cloth, decoration to boards and titles to spine in brown, yellow topstain, pictorial endpapers, light toning to cloth at extremities, with the unclipped pictorial dust-jacket by Elmer Hader, correct state with 'FIRST EDITION' on the front flap and with the $2.75 price extant, short closed tear to top edge of front panel, else near-fine; housed in modern blue cloth drop-back box, gilt lettering to spine.