About the book
During the Great Depression, two displaced ranch workers drift through California in search of jobs: George Milton, alert and protective, and Lennie Small, a big, strong man with an intellectual disability who relies on him. They share a dream of owning a small piece of land, where Lennie could look after rabbits. Having fled the town of Weed after trouble involving Lennie, they take work on a ranch, where Curley, the superintendent's aggressive son, takes against Lennie. Steinbeck drew on his own teenage years working beside migrant laborers, and the American Library Association ranks the book among the most challenged of the 21st century. He published the novella in 1937, borrowing its title from a poem by Robert Burns.
Barack Obama was reported to have come to enjoy it in high school, when his taste turned to classics. Site Builder Report founder Steve Benjamins finds Steinbeck uplifting and singles out a passage on the tension between business and humanity.
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This book has 2 recommendations
Barack Obama (Former USA President)
When he got to high school, the president said, his tastes changed and he learned to enjoy classics like “Of Mice and Men” and “The Great Gatsby.”
Steve Benjamins (Founder/Site Builder Report)
I think all of John Steinbeck’s books are uplifting. He sees the best in humanity and it leaves me feeling warm and generous. I always love this paragraph in Of Mice and Men that hints at the tension between business and humanity:
"It has always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honestly, understanding, and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."
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