ThirstyFish

For many The Grapes of Wrath is among the most depressing books that they've read. Published in 1939, it won John Steinbeck a Pulitzer Prize For Fiction in 1940 and was cited as a "great work" when Steinbeck was granted the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. It is constantly ranked as one of the best English-language novels of all time. With over 14 million copies sold, The Grapes of Wrath is also among the best selling novels of all time. It has been translated to practically every language in the world.

The story portrays the life of a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. They set out for California in order to escape the drought, economic hardship and bank foreclosures and seek jobs, dignity and a future. But, in California, jobs are rare, wages low and workers are being taken advantage of. Their California hopes, dreams and efforts in turn to despair and futility.

At the time of it's publication, The Grapes of Wrath caused a great public stir; It was denounced as a "pack of lies", banned and burned and "Steinbeck was attacked as a propagandist and a socialist from both the left and the right of the political spectrum". Despite all that, it became the best-selling book of 1939. Ever since the 2008 Financial Crisis, the novel's critique of Capitalism has been revisited by many authors. Many argue that "capitalism can produce terrible conditions" as it did for the Joad family in the book. And most likely, The Grapes of Wrath will become more and more relevant in the upcoming years.

"In my opinion, he [James Madison] would be an anti-capitalist if he were alive today -- as would Jefferson and Adam Smith", Noam Chomsky writes. I do not know what Madison, Jefferson or Adam Smith would do, but someone has to explain how bailing out the banks is capitalism?