The Wpa Guides: Mapping America

Rating:
Summary: Academic beyond the call of duty
Review: I bought this hoping that it would be a good, general assessment of the WPA Series, their accuracy, and their lasting impact. Alas, it turned out to be an almost ureadable piece of academese, interested only in how the governmental structure of the Guides' authorship muted the voices of protest and dissention -- as though any government, anywhere, has ever done otherwise, and without regard to how strikingly honest some of the guides (such as the first editions of the Washington DC and New Jersey Guides) were about issues such as racism and labor unrest. The study is weakened imeasurably by a narrow focus on only a few of the Guides; most US research libraries have most or all of them available. Ms. Bold's is also wanting; no focus on the writers (such as Cheever, Wright, and Algren) who participated in the project, no catalogue of the guides (which extended to regions, cities, and even small towns, and included local ephemera), and no mention of the best-known citation of the Guides in her consideration of their reputation: Steinbeck's pean to them in Travels with Charley. This could have been a good and useful study of the Guides; instead, it is worse than useless. Rather than a discussion of the facts paired with an analysis, Ms. Bold chose to publish a sterling example of why it is that historical writing is usually equated with tedium and polemics.