John Steinbeck wrote The Winter of Our Discontent in 1961, a year before receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, and it stands as his final novel. Steinbeck himself described it as being “about a large part of America as it is today,” focusing particularly on the clash between earned wealth and inherited fortune. The novel explores what leads a man—Ethan Allen Hawley, a grocery store clerk and former owner—to undergo a sudden shift in values. That change unfolds, significantly, on July 4th, the U.S. national holiday. The novel can be read as a sharp parable about American values and how money can undermine even the most steadfast honesty. A magnificent work whose message remains strikingly relevant more than fifty years after Steinbeck’s death.