Description

Book Synopsis

A New York Times Book Review Editors'' Choice Winner of the New Deal Book Award

An immersive account of the New Deal project that created state-by-state guidebooks to America, in the midst of the Great Depressionand employed some of the biggest names in American letters

The plan was as idealistic as it was audaciousand utterly unprecedented. Take thousands of hard-up writers and put them to work charting a country on the brink of social and economic collapse, with the aim of producing a series of guidebooks to the then forty-eight statesalong with hundreds of other publications dedicated to cities, regions, and townswhile also gathering reams of folklore, narratives of formerly enslaved people, and even recipes, all of varying quality, each revealing distinct sensibilities.

All this was the singular purview of the Federal Writers' Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration founded in 1935 to employ jobless writers, from once-

Republic of Detours

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    Order before 4pm today for delivery by Fri 10 Jul 2026.

    A Paperback / softback by Scott Borchert

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      Publisher: Picador USA
      Publication Date: 14/06/2022
      ISBN13: 9781250849083, 978-1250849083
      ISBN10: 125084908X
      Also in:
      Biography: writers

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      A New York Times Book Review Editors'' Choice Winner of the New Deal Book Award

      An immersive account of the New Deal project that created state-by-state guidebooks to America, in the midst of the Great Depressionand employed some of the biggest names in American letters

      The plan was as idealistic as it was audaciousand utterly unprecedented. Take thousands of hard-up writers and put them to work charting a country on the brink of social and economic collapse, with the aim of producing a series of guidebooks to the then forty-eight statesalong with hundreds of other publications dedicated to cities, regions, and townswhile also gathering reams of folklore, narratives of formerly enslaved people, and even recipes, all of varying quality, each revealing distinct sensibilities.

      All this was the singular purview of the Federal Writers' Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration founded in 1935 to employ jobless writers, from once-

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