NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1938. First edition. 93pp (text only) + [88] b&w plates on facing pages. Large 8vo. Oatmeal cloth; dust jacket. Toning and light foxing to edges of boards; dense but lightly colored foxing to endleaves and prelims; former owner's name and bookplate to ffep. Unclipped ("$3.00") jacket with tape-repaired chipping at spine ends and creased closed tears, wear to hinges. Very good in good jacket.
A book-length poem by Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982) accompanied by 88 black-and-white photographs mostly by Farm Security Administration photographers, including Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, and Ben Shahn. One of the iconic depression-era photobooks, which treads "a narrow line between documentary, propaganda and report" ( Parr & Badger, v1, p.180) examining the rapacious relationship between Americans and the lands they have come to inhabit.
