Customer Reviews

Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America

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I just loved this book! It is meticulously researched and beautifully written. For me, it has brought to life a period in this country's history that has enormous relevance to the difficult times in which we now live. I am not a historian, but I was fascinated by the story of the Federal Writers Project and Taylor's wonderful portraits of the writers who were offered a life line by the Project. The fabulous Depression-era photographs chosen to accompany the text were a perfect visual plus. Mr. Taylor is a terrific storyteller; I highly recommend this book.

When miracles occur one of the natural responses is to try and recreate them. What was it about 18th Century Vienna that produced Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and hundreds of other worthy composers? Even if you could figure it out, there is no way to pull all the elements together again in the real world. Just like the little flower that finds its way through a crack in the pavement to give life and beauty, however briefly, in a barren and hostile place, we should notice, wonder, and be grateful it happened at all.

In my view, this book from David Taylor is a little miracle about a bigger miracle. How many of us know about the WPA writers' project? How many know about the city guides they produced all over the country? Or the famous writers who were part of that project? Those city guides are collector's items now and widely admired not only for their historical value, but also for the marvelous writing and creativity and down right quirkiness so many of them have.

The FDR administration was throwing lots of money at lots of different things in an effort to find ways to help people who were without help. There was no social safety net. There was no bureaucracy in place to get in the way of fast action or creative approaches. Yes, there was criticism and a great deal of money was wasted, in the sense that people were paid and allowed to continue eating without actually successfully producing much. But a great deal was produced.

Today, there would be volumes describing what each standardized city guide must include and more volumes on style and acceptable language. Stultifying rules would require that the writers be more factory workers cranking out little sausage-link words rather than personal expressions of a city, its history, environs, and how people live there. While the modern guides might be wonderfully standardized they would hardly be wonderful reading.

That Taylor was willing and able to put this history down for us and give us such interesting information on writers like Cheever, Richard Wright, Anzia Yezierska, Ralph Ellison and many others is just a wonder. Taylor also has an eye for the telling detail and a writing style that invites us to turn the page and find out what is happening next. If you read a lot of non-fiction as I do, you know what a delightful talent that is.

Taylor includes many well chosen photographs that enliven the text and help us see the period in question in ways that allow us to imagine the text in richer context.

I urge you to read this book not just as a history of the city guides, but as a telling example of what was going on in the New Deal that isn't going on today in our current economic crisis. Sometimes safety nets bind as much as they save.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

I was unaware of this book until I had the good fortune of hearing Mr. Taylor read from his book at a local bookstore. He's a wonderful personality and the excepts were fascinating. So I got the book and have been throughly enjoying it. It's a vibrant account of a little known but important aspect of the WPA, and I've enjoyed learning more about it. I look forward to reading the rest of Mr. Taylor's work. He's one to watch.

David Taylor does an excellent job in capturing the WPA Writers' Project in the social and economic context of the day. For me, the most valuable pieces were not the success stories of writers who got a break and later became accomplished writers, but rather the stories of everyday people in an era of massive social change. I was born in the 50s and really never had much of a feel for the Great Depression, despite the stories of my grandparents and mandatory novels of high school. This book really brought much of the challenges of those days to life - not only economic hardship, but the realities of racism, the fear of Communism, and the ways progressive government thinking can help people by providing a second chance. A wonderfully written book that gives us much to think about. I highly recommend it - it provides an insightful window into our collective ancestry as Americans.

Excellent review of an important historical subject. Very readable and well researched. Liberally illustrated with historic photographs.

I just submitted my review of this book under the WPA Guide to New York City. I should have come here. For anyone interested in purchasing any of the Guides, you will find this book very interesting as it explores the people who wrote the Guides, their personal stories, and their dedication to getting the Guides published. I believe it will make you appreciate more what actually went into the Guides, how the information was gathered, and the quality and caliber of the authors. It gives you a snapshot of what this country was like at the beginning of the 1930s, when we were just sinking into the Great Depression. I highly recommend it.

When I first started reading this book I didn't know what to expect. I read the first 10 pages and I was hooked. It was very engaging and interesting. The writing was clear and descriptive; I felt as if I were in those WPA offices hearing the constant click of the typewriter keyboards. My curiosity is piqued and now I want to plan my own cross country trip to discover some of the colorful locations described in this book. Another fascinating aspect of this book is the human drama that seemed to unfold in these pages. It is truly a wonderful thing that these stories were told, giving us another view of what it means to be American.

The existence of the WPA Writers and how the program functioned is of interest, but we seem to read the same scenario over and over. Not a compelling read, but it does introduce us to the literature of these authors, and it left me wanting to read those works.

I have traveled all fifty states and after the first chapter of Mr. Taylor's book, I longed for a WPA guide from every one of them to pour over. Once I realized this was not possible, at least for me, I settled down and realized I had the closest thing to it right in my hands. "Soul of a People" has revealed to me the soul of our nation. No doubt Mr. Taylor studied volumes of material to compile this thoughtful work, and I am grateful he did. The gems he chose to include are precious and insightful. I am now blessed with a depth of understanding not only about the WPA project, but about the people who lived, worked, and struggled to create it. I would highly recommend this book to everyone!

But for me, it is too much about the writers and not enough about the events of the time.
I bought this book for my husband, and these are his words. But he is enjoying the book, nevertheless.