The WPA Guide to Missouri
The WPA Guide to Missouri

Author: Federal Writers' Project

Publisher: Trinity University Press

Published: 2013-10-31

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 1595342230

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During the 1930s in the United States, the Works Progress Administration developed the Federal Writers’ Project to support writers and artists while making a national effort to document the country’s shared history and culture. The American Guide series consists of individual guides to each of the states. Little-known authors—many of whom would later become celebrated literary figures—were commissioned to write these important books. John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison are among the more than 6,000 writers, editors, historians, and researchers who documented this celebration of local histories. Photographs, drawings, driving tours, detailed descriptions of towns, and rich cultural details exhibit each state’s unique flavor. The WPA Guide to the Show-Me State of Missouri literally shows the reader the virtues of this lovely region, by including vivid pictures of Art Deco skyscrapers in downtown Kansas City, farm scenes, the Ozark Mountains, and the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. It includes historical essays about the influence of these rivers on the state as well as Missouri’s important role in the American Civil War.

Kansas, a Guide to the Sunflower State
Kansas, a Guide to the Sunflower State

Author: Best Books on

Publisher: Best Books on

Published: 1939

Total Pages: 581

ISBN-13: 1623760151

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compiled and written by the Federal Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Kansas ... Sponsored by the State Department of Education.

The WPA Guide to 1930s Iowa
The WPA Guide to 1930s Iowa

Author: Joseph Frazier Federal Writers Project

Publisher: University of Iowa Press

Published: 2010-01-25

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13: 1587296632

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Originally published during the Great Depression, The WPA Guide nevertheless finds much to celebrate in the heartland of America. Nearly three dozen essays highlight Iowa's demography, economy, and culture but the heart of the book is a detailed traveler's guide, organized as seventeen different tours, that directs the reader to communities of particual social and historical interest.

The WPA Guides
The WPA Guides

Author: Christine Bold

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9781578061952

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In 1935 the FDR administration put 40,000 unemployed artists to work in four federal arts projects. The main contribution of one unit, the Federal Writers Project, was the American Guide Series, a collectively composed set of guidebooks to every state, most regions, and many cities, towns, and villages across the United States. The WPA arts projects were poised on the cusp of the modern bureaucratization of culture. They occurred at a moment when the federal government was extending its reach into citizens' daily lives. The 400 guidebooks the teams produced have been widely celebrated as icons of American democracy and diversity. Clumped together, they manifest a lofty role for the project and a heavy responsibility for its teams of writers. The guides assumed the authority of conceptualizing the national identity. In The WPA Guides: Mapping America Christine Bold closely examines this publicized view of the guides and reveals its flaws. Her research in archival materials reveals the negotiations and conflicts between the central editors in Washington and the local people in the states. Race, region, and gender are taken as important categories within which difference and conflict appear. She looks at the guidebook for each of five distinctively different locations -- Idaho, New York City, North Carolina, Missouri, and U.S. One and the Oregon Trail--to assess the editorial plotting of such issues as gender, race, ethnicity, and class. As regionalists jostled with federal officialdom, the faultlines of the project gaped open. Spotlighting the controversies between federal and state bureaucracies, Bold concludes that the image of America that the WPA fostered is closer to fabrication than to actuality. Christine Bold is director of the Centre for Cultural Studies and an associate professor of English at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario.

The WPA Guide to 1930s Kansas
The WPA Guide to 1930s Kansas

Author: Federal Writers' Project

Publisher:

Published: 1984

Total Pages: 582

ISBN-13:

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A reissue of a 1939 guide to Kansas compiled as part of the Federal Writers' Project during the Depression years, providing information not only about the attractions of the state, but serving as a cultural chronicle of an earlier time.

The Ozarks
The Ozarks

Author: Milton D. Rafferty

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

Published: 2001-11-01

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 9781610753029

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The Ozark Mountains reach into Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, forming a region with great natural beauty and a distinctive cultural and historical landscape. This comprehensive volume, a fully updated edition of a beloved classic, reaches into history, anthropology, economics, and geography to explore the complex relationships between the Ozarks' people and land through times of profound change. Drawing on more than thirty years of research, field observations, and interviews, Rafferty examines this subject matter through a range of topics: the settlement patterns and material cultures of Native Americans, French, Scotch-Irish, Germans, Italians, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians in the region; population growth; the guerrilla warfare and battles of the Civil War; the cultural transformations wrought by railroads, roads, mass media, and modern communication systems; the discovery, development, and decline of the great mining districts; the various forms of agriculture and the felling of the region's vast forests; and the built landscape, from log cabins to Victorian mansions to strip malls. This new edition also explores the new and potent forces which have reshaped the region over the last twenty years: tourism and the growing service industry, suburbanization, rapid population growth and retirement living, and agribusiness. Lavishly illustrated with historic and contemporary photographs, maps, and charts.

A Portrait of Missouri, 1935-1943
A Portrait of Missouri, 1935-1943

Author: Paul E. Parker

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9780826214386

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One tool the FSA used to defend itself against political attacks was its Photographic Section, under the direction of Roy Stryker.".

Missouri
Missouri

Author:

Publisher: Missouri History Museum

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 800

ISBN-13: 9781883982232

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Once considered a "foolish boondoggle" of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration, the Federal Writers' Project was initiated to allow employment opportunity to those associated with the arts during the Great Depression. The American Guide Series became the most successful venture, offering jobs to writers nationwide as each state endeavored to produce a comprehensive guidebook. Under the direction of Charles van Ravenswaay, former director of the Missouri Historical Society, Missouri: A Guide to the "Show Me" State was first published in 1941. Now, in a classic reprint, Missouri Historical Society Press restores this guidebook to its original splendor and returns it to the bookshelves. With a current road map included with the book, travelers can compare sights and tours described in the antiquated guide and see how they have developed or disappeared. As Walter A. Schroeder and Howard W. Marshall describe in the updated introduction, "The `unmarked, dirt road, impassable when wet, ' that we encounter in reading the WPA guide is no longer a hurdle to be negotiated in order to reach an out-of-the-way site." Due to nearly thirty thousand additional miles of paved roadway and endless gas station and motel chains, every corner of Missouri is now easily accessible. And, as Missouri Historical Society President Robert R. Archibald states in the foreword, "If you are the kind of traveler who has no intention of stirring from a comfortable chair near the reading lamp, this reprint is really all the equipment you require for a fascinating journey through the Missouri of the past."

The WPA Guide to 1930s Montana
The WPA Guide to 1930s Montana

Author:

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 9780816515035

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First published in 1939, this nostalgic guide includes chapters on Montana's natural setting, history, economy, and cultural life as of half a century ago, plus separate entries for Billings, Butte, Great Falls, Helena, and Missoula--which at the time boasted four hotels and five-cent bus fares. There then follow, in the WPA Guide tradition, 18 tours that crisscross the state and point out not only natural splendors along the way but also such noteworthy historic sites as Custer Battlefield, the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Boothill Cemetery in Virginia City, and the site of the "holing-up" shanty of Calamity Jane. Fourteen additional tours--four for roads, ten for trails--guide readers through Glacier National Park.

A Living History of the Ozarks
A Living History of the Ozarks

Author: Rossiter, Phyllis

Publisher: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.

Published: 2010-09-23

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 9781455607594

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The Ozarks region-spanning parts of Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma-overflows with visible fragments of the past. A Living History of the Ozarks is a guide to the region through landmarks and sites which offer clues to its intriguing history. This splendorous land inspired Phyllis Rossiter, a native of the Ozarks, to write about the area to help people learn to appreciate its beauty and to recognize our dependence upon nature. "I feel that it's important to safeguard what we have left," says Rossiter. "In my writing, if I can help achieve that, then that's what I want to do-to help people acquire an appreciation for nature." Abounding with sparkling lakes and rivers (including the great Lake of the Ozarks), clear blue springs, rugged mountains, ancient caves, and windswept prairies, the Ozarks are a visitor's wonderland of natural beauty and legendary mystique. Author Phyllis Rossiter explores the major areas that make up the storied Ozarks. The Lake of the Ozarks region, the Springfield plateau, Ozark mountain country, the Buffalo National River, White River Hills, and the Big Spring region are all covered in depth. A detailed appendix lists places to view ongoing history such as caves and rock formations, Indian artifacts, bridges and ferries, gristmills, Civil War monuments, heritage crafts, mountain music, hiking trails, floatable rivers, national parks, and more. Offering keen insight on the area's history, as well as a complete guide to the sites and scenic spots of this popular American vacation destination, this book is a marvelous documentation of "living history" for tourists and interested area residents alike. Phyllis Rossiter resides in Gainesville, Missouri, where she is an active writer, photographer, conservationist, and lecturer. She is a member of the Missouri Writers Guild, the Ozarks Writers League, the Society of Children's Book Writers, and the Outdoor Writers of America.