In Dubious Battle, (1936), is John Steinbeck's first book of a trilogy by the author that looks at the migrant labor problem in the 1930s. The novel focuses on labor organizers and a strike in California's apple fields. The book caused controversy when it was published.
Of Mice and Men (1937) is the second book in Steinbeck's trilogy of migrant farmers. It is about two migrants, one who is mentally handicapped, and how their dreams of a better life can never be realized because of the oppressive social system.
Emile Zola's Germinal (1885) is set in a French mining town. The main character in the novel, Etienne Lantier, witnesses how the families of the working class are destroyed by a social environment that sees people only as disposable resources. It is a.....
