(Actually, I didn't even know the details of the Cuban Missile Crisis until I was in my twenties, when I helped a college friend with a paper... my schools should be ashamed.)
i didn't read steinbeck until my mid-twenties.
when i finished grapes of wrath, i was stunned, and sat there, and wondered: how could i have been allowed to graduate high school without reading this?
are you really a teacher? i have, btw, a very, very, very low opinion of teachers (witness, e.g., the fea's interference in florida's governor's race ... i could continue endlessly. [my wife is a teacher. ugh. otherwise, she is very desireable.])