Steinbeck's lean tragedy of two migrant workers — quick, watchful George and the gentle giant Lennie — chasing a few acres they will never own. He built it to be read in a sitting or staged straight from the page, and the cruelty of its ending has gotten it banned about as often as it has been assigned. Beneath the Depression-era hardship it is a book about loneliness, and about the rare, fragile fact of having someone. The title comes from Burns: the best-laid schemes gang aft agley.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.