Celebrating its 75th anniversary, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men remains on of America's most widely read and beloved novels. An unlikely pair, George and Lennie, two migrant workers in California during the Great Depression, grasp for their American Dream in a tale of commitment, loneliness, hope and loss. From the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, this Steinbeck Centennial Edition features French flaps and deckled pages. George and his simple-minded friend Lenny dream, as drifters will, of a place to call their own—a couple of acres and a few pigs, chickens, and rabbits back in Hill Country where land is cheap. But after they come to work on a ranch in the fertile Salinas Valley of California, their hopes, like “the best laid schemes o’mice an’ men,” begin to go awry.

Of Mice and Men also represents an experiment in form, as Steinbeck described his work, “a kind of playable novel, written in novel form but so scened and set that it can be played as it stands.” A rarity in American letters, it achieved remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway play, and three acclaimed films.

Susan Shillinglaw is a professor of English at San Jose State University and scholar in residence at the National Steinbeck Center. She has published widely on Steinbeck, most recently A Journey into Steinbeck’s California (2006) and a forthcoming biography of Carol and John Steinbeck.