Republic of detours : how the New Deal paid broke writers to rediscover America
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

An immersive account of the New Deal project that created state-by-state guidebooks to America, in the midst of the Great Depression -- and employed some of the biggest names in American letters. The plan was as idealistic as it was audacious -- and 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 states -- along with hundreds of other publications dedicated to cities, regions, and towns -- while also gathering reams of folklore, narratives of formerly enslaved people, and even recipes, all of varying quality, each revealing distinct sensibilities.