In August 1939, "The Grapes of Wrath" was the most popular book in America, and quickly becoming the most beleaguered.

The Kansas City library banned it, the San Francisco library relegated it to "closed shelves," and members of the East St. Louis, Ill., library board burned three copies. For a time, John Steinbeck's epic Dust Bowl saga was prohibited from traveling through the U.S. mail.

Then the Kern County Board of Supervisors voted to remove it from Bakersfield's schools and public libraries.

Stanley Abel, active in the local Ku Klux Klan, presented a resolution to his fellow supervisors that said the novel was "filled with profanity, lewd, foul and obscene language and unfit for use in American homes." He talked of defending free enterprise and "people who have been wronged." He asked that 20th Century Fox cease production of the film adaptation, starring Henry Fonda.

The resolution passed 4-1, apparently with no discussion.

Gretchen Knief, the Bakersfield Public Library's head librarian, had heard no complaints from patrons, and, in fact, the waiting list for "The Grapes of Wrath" was at 600 names. She would challenge the supervisors' decision.

So begins Rick Wartzman's "Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' " (Public Affairs Books, $26.95, 310 pages). The title comes from a comment by powerful Kern County farmer Bill Camp, who said Steinbeck's book was "obscene in the extreme sense of the word." Camp would supervise the burning of "The Grapes of Wrath" a few days later in downtown Bakersfield.

Wartzman recounts a complex time in American history, told in relation to events that occurred over seven days in August 1939 in Kern County. The local rich growers and poorly paid farmworkers had long struggled over the issue of fair wages. (Bakersfield, the county seat, is about 300 miles south of Sacramento.)

"This is a book where the backdrop is arguably more important than the foreground," says Wartzman, a former journalist who now is director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University. He'll be in Sacramento on Friday for two events on behalf of his book.

"It's really meant to be a window into this incredible era, into the deep divide between left and right, and the deep divide between capital and labor that was shaking up California and spurred Steinbeck to write 'The Grapes of Wrath' and, in turn, spurred this backlash against the novel," he says.

"The Grapes of Wrath" is the story of the Joad family's migration from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California, which they see as the Promised Land. Once here, though, they face terrible social and economic hardships.

Steinbeck wrote the novel after spending time in migrant worker camps, some in Kern County, for a series of articles that ran in the San Francisco News in 1936.

Susan Shillinglaw, a San Jose State University professor and scholar-in-residence at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, calls "The Grapes of Wrath" one of the most searing accounts of the Depression ever written.

"And I think it's one of the most important books of the 20th century as a novel of social protest," she says. "I think it's one of the most epic portrayals of dispossession, so it's a book that touches a lot of nerves. It's so compassionate, that sense of the emotional connection we should have with people who suffer."

Wartzman read "The Grapes of Wrath" several times over the years, but not until he immersed himself in 1930s politics while doing research did he come to appreciate the "radical" nature of Steinbeck's work.

"It's just remarkable," he says. "Steinbeck didn't quite call for revolution, but he came really close. And (the novel) was so popular, I think there was a general measure of fear by the establishment that this could set things off, be the match at the tinderbox. It's a novel that's still incredibly powerful, not only on the level of censorship, but some of its economic messages are resonating today louder than ever.

Call The Bee's Dixie Reid, (916) 321-1134.