John Ray Grisham Jr. (born February 8, 1955) is a former politician, retired attorney, and American novelist known for his novels of legal drama. He is the second son of Protestant Baptist parents from Jonesborough, Arkansas, in the American South. His father was a local cotton farmer. The family moved around a number of places, and in 1967, they settled in South Haven, DeSoto County, Mississippi, where John graduated from high school. Encouraged by his mother, John developed a love of reading at an early age, and he particularly loved reading John Steinbeck. In 1977, he graduated from Mississippi State University with a degree in accounting. He returned to the university to major in tax law, then switched to criminal law, graduating in 1981. In 1983, he was elected as a Democrat to the state Attorney General’s Office, where he served until 1990. In September 2010, Grisham condemned the campaign by Pastor Terry Jones and the Dove World Outreach Center to burn the Quran, saying, “This is a deeply intolerant individual. He is a madman and a religious fanatic who is spreading hate instead of fulfilling his duty as a pastor.” He has sold over 60,742,288 copies of his books, making him one of the best-selling authors of the 1990s.