The author of such classic works as The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row, John Steinbeck is also a Nobel Prize winner and one of the most revered figures in America's literary pantheon. In 1941, Steinbeck and his close friend Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist, rented a ship and set about exploring the Gulf of California. The scientific data collected, along with Steinbeck's log of the journey, were detailed in the work Sea of Cortez. Ten years later, the log was published on its own, chock-full of elegantly described marine life and often-amusing anecdotes about the adventure.