FSA: The American Vision

Book Description

The photographs produced by the FSA during the Great Depression constitute one of America's greatest artistic legacies. The project launched a stellar group of young photographers, including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Marion Post Walcott, and Gordon Parks, who fanned out across America and created images of intense power and poetry. Thousands of FSA photographs have been exhibited and published, and we may feel that we know them well. For this remarkable volume, however, Gilles Mora and Beverly Brannan immersed themselves in the vast archive at the Library of Congress and emerged with unknown treasures. Theirs is a new view of the achievement of the FSA photographers—the most comprehensive in print—that finally gives them their due as the creators of a new American photographic vision.

Customer Reviews:

America, America.......2007-09-19

Sure their vision was a bit romantic, but anyone who appreciates what the FSA photographers, under Roy Stryker's direction, did will also appreciate this book. Never before and never since then (pace, Robert Frank) has the country sat for its portrait. It would have been nice to have the numbers in the Smithsonian's Prints and Photographs Department, where the pictures are kept. The nation may have sat for its portrait, but the pictures belong to you.

Fundamental para entender la fotografía norteamericana.......2007-05-15

Un libro fundamental para entender una parte importante de la fotografía norteamericana.

Good Wrap on the FSA photographers.......2007-04-18

This book have done a great job by putting this all together by project/Date base and indicating where they went. It has answered alot of my questions on the FSA photographers.
I am pleased the book used mostly unknown photographs.
I have already raving about this book

Looking at masters in photography.......2007-01-09

The FSA book is a wonderful look at an ear gone by. And the works of Dorothea Lang, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, Theodor Jung and Carl Mydans in the early years is well worth the price of the book. But to continue going forward is remarkable. But the things that make this a wonderful collection of photographs is that it is not just the most famous works by the photographers of the FSA but the ones that have not been published in some 70 plus years or not at all. Projects like this come once in a life time. For any photographer who enjoys photo essays this book is a must and if you are interested in history of America this is a book that will leave and impression on you. If you want to see great photographs this book is for you, if you want to see them by great photographers than this book id definitely for you.

Stryker's vision revealed.......2006-10-15

A worthy addition to a very small number of books that present a general selection of Farm Security Administration photos in an art book format. To my mind there are only three others, In this proud land: America, 1935-1943, as seen in the FSA photographs, A Vision Shared: A Classic Portrait of America and Its People, 1935-1943, (the only sumptuous large book production of the three) and Long Time Coming: A Photographic Portrait of America, 1935-1943. 'FSA' easily joins this list with 470 beautifully printed photos on quality paper with an impressive 250+ dpi screen and a unique and interesting editorial format.

Each of the sixteen FSA/OWI photographers gets a chapter that is divided into two parts. Firstly there is a selection of photos covering a single subject, usually between thirteen and twenty-five photos, though John Collier gets an impressive thirty-four of his work in the Pennsylvania coal industry, followed by a general selection of that photographer's work of between four and twelve images. I thought the single theme idea worked well, you can see how Walker Evens seemed to search out monuments and his love of typographic signs or Jack Delano and Russell Lee's interest in people doing ordinary jobs. Esther Bubley has a fascinating twenty-four shots taken on Greyhound bus trips in 1943. Each photographer's gallery selection is a mix of their well-known work and others, some published here for the first time.

The two authors contribute interesting essays, Brannan explains the overall idea of Stryker's vision and Mora writes about the creative aspects of the photographs. The back of the book has a useful chronology and bibliography for each photographer.

'FSA' is a beautiful book of content rich photos but I was rather disappointed with the over generous amount of white space on many pages. So many of these photos are landscape and would suit that book format which is why I think Michael Lesy's 'Long Time Coming' was so successful. It has slightly less photos than 'FSA' but they are bigger and presented in the more appropriate format. The captions also, in 'FSA', are printed on a separate page following each photo selection when they clearly should be on each relevant photo page (when will book designers get this right!). Despite these reservations and as I said earlier, 'FSA' is a wonderful addition to the published photo archive of America's Depression and early war years.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

The King of California: J. G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire

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The king of California
History, Biography and Expose?
Overstuffed but Worth Reading
Surfaced and Harpooned
Tremendous historical, political, and social epic

The King of California: J. G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire
Mark Arax , and Rick Wartzman
Manufacturer: PublicAffairs
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition
In My Father's Name
Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm
The Great Thirst: Californians and Water-A History, Revised Edition
Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty

ASIN: 1586480286

Book Description

A rich, colorful history of California centering on the untold story of America 's biggest farmer, J.G. Boswell, who controls more than $1 billion worth of water rights and real estate in the heart of the state.

J.G. Boswell is the biggest farmer in America. Over the past fifty years he has built a secret empire while thumbing his nose at nature, politicians, labor unions and every journalist who ever tried to lift the veil on the ultimate "factory in the fields." Now eighty years old, with an almost pathological bent toward privacy, Boswell has spent the past few years confiding one of the great stories of the American West to Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman. The King of California is the previously untold account of how a Georgia slave-owning family migrated to California in the early 1920s, drained one of America 's biggest lakes in an act of incredible hubris and carved out the richest cotton empire in the world. Indeed, the sophistication of Boswell 's agricultural operation--from lab to field to gin--is unrivaled anywhere.

Much more than a business story, this is a sweeping social history that details the saga of cotton growers who were chased from the South by the boll weevil and brought their black farmhands to California. It is a gripping read with cameos by a cast of famous characters, from Cecil B. DeMille to Cesar Chavez.

Customer Reviews:

The king of California.......2006-11-04

This book is way too long and somewhat redundant and boring. The basic story is good, but the author takes too much time and too many pages to tell it.

History, Biography and Expose?.......2006-06-23

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in politics, agriculture, or water rights. It is a well-written and very readable.

It follows four generations of the Boswell family to trace how they assembled the largest industrial farm in the world. Along the way, the authors explore the history of the San Joaquin valley and those who came there to farm it, those who left and those who got left behind. For every group that made a fortune, there were many others who were disappointed. There are plenty of interesting stories of Washington and Sacramento politics, and stories of common people following dreams.

The book examines the effect of large scale farming on farm owners, on those who work the farms now and those who worked them in the past. It provides some good background on the politics of water rights and government involvement in farming, and on the involvement of agriculture in local, state and federal politics.

If you are interested in the politics and history of water in the western states, Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner is one of the best books I have read on any subject.

Overstuffed but Worth Reading.......2005-11-26

I grew up in Fresno, in the shadow of agribusiness. The story behind "King of California" is a fascinating and important one but I'm not sure this "biography" does it justice. I disliked the awkward mixture of history and journalism. Is this an expose, a biography or history? Its never really clear and the way the book is organized, around the four seasons, is particularly opaque. What does it mean to call a section, "winter?" when it is covering history spanning decades and contains interviews with living people? That said, the material is fascinating. From the role the Boswell's played in taming Tulare Lake, to the development of modern cotton farming, the politics of agriculture and the way big business in general got access and results in subsidies and favorable policy. Early on, Tulare Lake and by extension, the San Joaquin Valley in its pre-U.S. days is described with a vividness I've rarely read elsewhere. However, the description of the Boswell's roots in racism and its legacy in the Central Valley is definitely worth telling but I think it gets too little space here and competes with so many other subjects. Frankly, I'm surprised that this book has gotten the acclaim that it has. While its clearly well researched, the writing is spotty lucid in some places and sensationalized elsewhere. I think the book tries to cover far too many topics; Water politics, cotton farming, racism in California, family history, corporate intrigue, labor issues, flood control and company towns. Had it narrowed it focus to just water, cotton and corporate intrigue, I think it would have been a far more powerful book.

Surfaced and Harpooned.......2005-04-26

This far-reaching book is quite an accomplishment in biography and investigative journalism. Arax and Wartzman cover the history of the immense Boswell farming company of California, and the two guys named J.G. (the founding uncle and the current chairman, his nephew) who built the company into the largest cotton operation on Earth. Through cutthroat competitive instincts and political wheeling-and-dealing, the Boswells amassed tens of thousands of acres in California's Central Valley, and were instrumental in eliminating what was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, as the former Tulare Lake was transformed into a festering network of levees, canals, and cesspools dedicated to the mass production of cotton. Thus, the Boswells built the area's environment, culture, and economics for their own profitability.

The book also serves as a great exploration of the business of factory farming, detailing the racism and poverty experienced by Black and Mexican workers, as well as the shifty agricultural and hydrological politics of Big Ag in California - as the Boswells and their competitors/allies buy politicians, stack laws and regulations in their favor, and claim flood control as a reason to alter the natural course of rivers and to completely drain the vast Tulare Lake. Best of all, we see how big business really works out West, with the hypocrisy of so-called rugged outdoorsmen (actually pampered CEO's) who incessantly rail against government interference while also taking in millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies that are meant to help the little guy. This book is immensely informative but does often get tied up in unnecessary details, such as descriptions of petty political shenanigans in the construction of a nearby dam. But the motto of the Boswell clan has been that a whale can't be harpooned if it doesn't come to the surface (a legacy of silence and obfuscation), but Arax and Wartzman have deftly cracked into the wall of secrecy surrounding the Boswells and their often ill-gotten empire, [~doomsdayer520~]

Tremendous historical, political, and social epic.......2004-11-09

The book centers around three generations of Boswells as they migrated from Green County Georgia to Kings County California and became the largest producers of cotton in the world, without becoming a household name.

The book also tells of the natural, social, and political histories of the San Joaquin Valley from the days of indigenous peoples and the first Spanish invaders to the present day.

The epic is a fascinating study of twentieth century American history, society, economics, business, finance, management, politics, public policy, labor relations, mechanization, technology, modernization, and nature.

The more personal stories of family, romance, crime, and punishment read more like a good novel.

Some have found the authors liberally biased, but as a conservative, I found the authors well balanced in their presentations of all sides of the stories.

As others have said, the scope is huge and the research extensive. As someone who was born and raised in Kings County California, I found this heretofor unknown local history to be quite fascinating. Nevertheless, I believe this book will have broad appeal to many readers.

Billy Ray's Farm: Essays from a Place Called Tula

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Beautiful writing
Better than most
On Writing and Ranching
Perfectly simple!!
Earthy essays on rural life written with a natural innocence

Billy Ray's Farm: Essays from a Place Called Tula
Larry Brown
Manufacturer: Touchstone
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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On Fire
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ASIN: 0743225244

Book Description

In Billy Ray's Farm, Larry Brown brings the appealing blend of candor, humor, and poignancy of his acclaimed novels Fay and Father and Son to nine personal essays that explore the emotional and physical landscape of the corner of Mississippi he calls home. The centerpiece of this collection offers a moving description of life on his son's cattle farm, capturing Brown's deep-seated attachment to his family and to the land. In other pieces, Brown takes readers inside the writing cabin he built, chronicles his attempt to outsmart a wily coyote intent on killing the farm's baby goats, and reveals his reactions to being constantly compared to William Faulkner, a writer inspired by the same geography. Threaded through each piece are warm reflections on the Southern musicians and authors who influenced his writings.

At once entertaining and insightful, Billy Ray's Farm brilliantly illuminates how a great writer responds, personally and artistically, to the patch of land he lives on, providing a wonderful look into the mysterious sources of a writer's motivation.

Customer Reviews:

Beautiful writing.......2007-07-20

After reading Larry Brown's memoir/essay collection "Billy Ray's Farm", I felt so good about it- I mean, it was one of the finest reading experiences I'd had in years, that I decided to write the author and thank him for writing it. That's when I found out that Mr. Brown had passed away. What a fine writer we've lost.

Better than most.......2006-11-10

This one was more readable than most of Larry Brown's other works.

On Writing and Ranching.......2002-04-14

"What is it about Oxford [Mississippi] that produces writers?" It's a question Larry Brown, Barry Hannah and John Grisham get asked a lot. Brown says, "They always want to ask about Faulkner and what it all means, being a writer in Oxford, and where all the stories come from....

"I don't know what the answer is for anybody else, and I don't know what caused Faulkner to write," he explains, but "Most times, for any writer, I think it springs from some sort of yearning in the breast to let things out, to say something about the human condition, maybe just to simply to tell a story."

Of this, he knows plenty, for the essays in this memoir - I say "this," as opposed to "his," because I'm sure there will be many more - are stories of his life, so far; as a writer, indulgent father, and reluctant farmer.

Getting back to the question, he supposes it basically boils down to this: "Where do you get your ideas?" His response is "I believe that writers have to write what they know about. I don't think there's much choice in that." Elaborating, he says, "All [Faulkner] was doing was what every other writer does, and that is drawing upon the well of memory and experience and imagination that every writer pulls his or her material from. The things you know, the things you have seen or heard of, the things you can imagine. A writer rolls all that stuff together kind of like a taco and comes up with fiction. And I think whatever you write about, you have to know it. Concretely. Absolutely. Realistically."

Brown has an easy, honest way with language that is as smooth as Mississippi molasses. Describing the region around Tula, where he spent his teenage years, he writes, "The tall cypresses with their knees standing in water were hollow coon castles, the bark worn smooth on one side only from the steady traffic of coons scrambling up in the morning and down at night, regular as dairymen."

Reminiscing about his hunting expeditions with neighbors, he writes, "in the reserves of good memories we all hold, those times are special and seem magical to me, those nights in the woods and those days in the fields, those lessons in the wild."

Hunting is a tradition that weaves its way through Brown's family's generations, one he now shares with his sons: "They bring in ducks and squirrels and deer and doves, and I cook for them as my mother did for me, and they tell me their hunting stories, and I listen to catch their words."

In addition to letting us glimpse his personal life, Brown takes us down the long enduring road he's taken in becoming a writer. Deliberately seeking mentors in his early days as a writer, he found one when a friend lent him a copy of A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews. He would go on to read everything by the author he could get his hands on, and in the end, he's "grateful that a writer like him walks this earth."

Brown had written five unpublished novels by 1985, "and almost a hundred short stories that had, for the most part, gone begging also." Pulling 24-hour shifts at the Oxford fire department, working odd jobs on his off-days to make ends meet, and writing in his "spare" time, Brown burned one of his novels in his backyard and worked on his rejection-slip collection.

His "apprenticeship period" would span seven years - a relative bargain, considering Crews' lasted 10 - until his first book of short stories, Facing the Music, was accepted for publication.

Brown writes with such a subtle passion. Speaking of his son, Billy Ray, whose farm is the subject of the essay chosen for the book's title, he tells, "The barn leaks. It's an old barn, pretty ragged, but he's tried to fix it up. He's mowed yards since he was twelve years old, and worked as a butcher, and hauled hay, and laid sod, and worked on a hog farm. He's saved his money, and all he's ever wanted is to be a cattleman. And it's always hurt me deep that he has had such bad luck."

Perhaps Billy Ray should take a page from his father's history and realize that with a little luck and a lot of dedication, dreams come true.

Perfectly simple!!.......2002-02-05

Larry Brown gets better with each book published. This book is quintessential Larry Brown. Simple, sparse, and completely accessible. Some people may be surprised at the lighter tones in this book of essays. It just goes to show the honesty in everything Brown writes. I have a little Larry Brown story that I think his fans would appreciate. I had the pleasure of hearing Brown read from Billy Ray's Farm at a bookshop in New York City. By mistake someone in the press printed the time of the reading incorrectly by almost two hours. Two people walked in and were devastated that they missed his reading. One of the employees told them that he was still in the back if they wanted to go talk to them. They were both a little awestruck. They're huge fans of his. After getting up the nerve they went up to them and told them how much his writing meant to them and how sorry they were to miss the reading. So what do you think he did? He took these two people into a corner of the store and read two chapters to them. Only them. It was a great thing to see and it's that quality that comes through in all of his stories. Truth and fiction. He is by far my favorite writer working today. I'm a big fan of Jim Harrison and Harry Crews as well, being from the south. If you haven't read "Fay" yet, pick it up as soon as you can. It's an amazing story. Brown does what all great writers do. He makes you forget that you're reading. Can't wait to see what's next.

Earthy essays on rural life written with a natural innocence.......2001-06-24

One of these days when I get through cleaning up from the storm, I'm going to start building a little cabin, right over there above the pond, up in the deep part of that shade.--Larry Brown

Larry Brown has published seven earlier works: two books of short stories (Facing the Music and Big Bad Love), an acclaimed memoir (On Fire), and four novels (Dirty Work, Joe, Father and Son, and Fay).

Billy Ray's Farm contains ten essays dealing with, among other things, the author's struggling apprenticeship to become a published author {"Harry Crews: Mentor and Friend"), his unsuccessful stalking of a goat-killing coyote ("Goatsongs"), the heartbreak of cow ownership and his son's frustrated efforts to build a thriving cattle business ("Billy Ray's Farm"), a big "fish grab" at the Enid Spillway ("So Much Fish, So Close to Home"), and his determination to carve an enclave out of the wilderness by building single-handedly a ten-by-twelve cabin ("Shack").

City slickers unfamiliar with rural life will learn from Brown all about calfpullers and other arcane mysteries.

Like Hemingway, Brown writes with a sparse, down-to-earth, no-nonsense style, with a clarity and precision unlike the convoluted sentences of Faulkner's turgid prose. When critics compare Brown to Faulkner, therefore, they do not mean the tempo of Brown's style but rather the tone of his stories, which, like Faulkner, are written from the heart and spirit, with compassion and a love for the land and people of Mississippi, Brown's microcosmic "postage stamp" universe.

By the way, in case you've never been there, Tula is a small town situated some twenty miles miles south-southeast of Oxford, Miss. (the site of Faulkner's home).

Brown writes with honesty and (often self-deprecating) humor, albeit a melancholy humor tinged with irony. His earthy language has a natural innocence, like cow droppings on a footpath.

In "discovering" Larry Brown, I am a Johnny-come-lately. Billy Ray's Farm is the first of his works I have read, but it definitely will not be the last.

Book Description

This book was the first broad exposé of the social and environmental damage inflicted by the growth of corporate agriculture in California. Factories in the Field--together with the work of Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and John Steinbeck--dramatizes the misery of the dust bowl migrants hoping to find work in California agriculture. McWilliams starts with the scandals of the Spanish land grant purchases, and continues on to examine the experience of the various ethnic groups that have provided labor for California's agricultural industry--Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos, Armenians--the strikes, and the efforts to organize labor unions

Customer Reviews:

Factories in the Field.......2001-11-24

An excellent book for anyone interested in California History, US History, the Great Depression or the history of corporate agriculture. Originally released the same year as Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, McWilliams' book relates the history of not only migrant farm labor in California, but the corporate farm as well. Having included extensive background on California's 19th Century land grab, McWilliams presents a comprehensive look at corporate agriculture, including its effect on various labor groups and the economy of the State of California. Written with a definite bias toward the underdog (the migrant worker), Factories in the Field nevertheless provides the reader with an understanding of the beginnings of corporate economy in California and its true beginnings in agriculture, including an explanation of the power of the ag growers--a political hot potato that continues in the state today.

Love of the Land: Essential Farm and Conservation Readings from an American Golden Age, 1880-1920

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Love of the Land: Essential Farm and Conservation Readings from an American Golden Age, 1880-1920

Manufacturer: Cambria Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1934043338

Book Description

Love of the Land: Essential Farm and Conservation Readings from an American Golden Age, 1880-1920 features an unprecedented collection of historical, interdisciplinary essays that reconstruct for the contemporary reader the dynamic dialogue between agriculturist and ecologist. Reflecting the contemporary convergence of agricultural and environmental histories into a larger, land-centered narrative, the highly readable essays in this nearly five-hundred-page anthology present the pioneering words of the academics and agriculturalists, capitalists and conservationists, ecologists and environmentalists, and policymakers and politicos who labored to bring the disparate fields of conservation and agriculture into organic whole. Love of the Land offers a comprehensive, groundbreaking treatment of ecological themes ideal for students and researchers of agricultural and environmental thought. "Zachary Jack's Love of the Land fills a need. It provides a wide-angle view of early U.S. agricultural and conservation thought, which were major influences on both the economy and ethic of this developing country. Especially impressive are the encompassing array of writers - farm, conservation, political, and literary figures; the selected excerpts - each with a message that resounds; and finally the book's preface - worth reading again after finishing the book's last page." Duane Acker, former Assistant Secretary for science and education, U.S. Department of Agriculture and President Emeritus, Kansas State University "This anthology ambitiously takes you on a mind-stretching adventure into our national past, and our future. It offers, actually, an interdisciplinary short course - a compact curriculum - about the dynamics and varied dimensions of rural development and conservation in America... You may appreciate knowing from the start that you have not been dumped on your own into a loose collection of readings. You realize you are led by a compiler who cares and knows much about this subject, ranged widely and thoughtfully in choosing the readings, adds much to them and is leading you helpfully through them." James F. Evans, Professor Emeritus, Agricultural Communications and Journalism, University of Illinois

The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement

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read and learn
Cesar Chavez Merits a National Holiday !
a must read book
A great historical review of the "other" civil rights movement
Fight in the Fields

The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement
Susan Ferriss , and Ricardo Sandoval
Manufacturer: Harcourt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Words of Cesar Chavez
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ASIN: 0151002398

Customer Reviews:

read and learn.......2007-01-04

"the fight in the fields" is an excellent biographical account of cesar chavez and the farmworkers movement. it's a must read for anyone interested in making a difference.

Cesar Chavez Merits a National Holiday !.......2006-11-24

"The Fight in the Fields" compelled me to recognize that Cesar Chavez is arguably the greatest humanitarian in US history. He tirelessly and peacefully campaigned on behalf of underpaid and overworked farmworkers and migrants who were forced to toil amidst toxic insecticides and pesticides. Chavez was profoundly influenced by Gandhi, Martin Luther King and St. Francis of Assisi. He was an environmentalist, a vegetarian and animal welfare advocate who denounced dogfighting, bullfighting, cockfighting, slaughterhouses and rodeos because they are all rooted in inhumane violence. Cesar Chavez had reverence for all life and was a paragon of compassion. He was known as America's Catholic Ghandi of the Fields. The United States should have a national Holiday for Cesar Chavez's birthday, specifically, March 31.

a must read book.......2006-11-04

This is a well written book and is fun to read.

A great historical review of the "other" civil rights movement.......2006-07-06

The authors did a great job of detailing the early childhood that shaped the future leader of the farm workers movement. They also do a great job of highlighting the trails, ups and downs of Cesar Chavez and the farm workers movement. One gets a good idea of just how bad conditions were before the movement and how much improvement has been made since the inception of the movement. It also touches the heart with the human aspect of the lives that were shackled in the old system and changed for the good with the reforms that were won. Cesar Chavez is a true humanitarian that should be mentioned with the likes of Martin Luther King and Gandhi. This is truly a must read.

Fight in the Fields.......2005-07-21

This is a book based upon the successful PBS/Sundance Film of the same name. While it has several wonderful attributes (some excellent and rare pictures), it does not stand up to the earlier work of London and Anderson in So Shall Ye Reap. In reality, this is more of a biography of Cesar Chavez than a careful review of agricultural labor history. In the end, I would buy it again/

Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution (Princeton Economic History of the Western World)

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3.5 stars, interesting, but not easy to read

Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution (Princeton Economic History of the Western World)
Robert C. Allen
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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Tear Off the Masks!: Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia
The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783

ASIN: 0691006962

Book Description

To say that history's greatest economic experiment--Soviet communism--was also its greatest economic failure is to say what many consider obvious. Here, in a startling reinterpretation, Robert Allen argues that the USSR was one of the most successful developing economies of the twentieth century. He reaches this provocative conclusion by recalculating national consumption and using economic, demographic, and computer simulation models to address the "what if" questions central to Soviet history. Moreover, by comparing Soviet performance not only with advanced but with less developed countries, he provides a meaningful context for its evaluation.

Although the Russian economy began to develop in the late nineteenth century based on wheat exports, modern economic growth proved elusive. But growth was rapid from 1928 to the 1970s--due to successful Five Year Plans. Notwithstanding the horrors of Stalinism, the building of heavy industry accelerated growth during the 1930s and raised living standards, especially for the many peasants who moved to cities. A sudden drop in fertility due to the education of women and their employment outside the home also facilitated growth.

While highlighting the previously underemphasized achievements of Soviet planning, Farm to Factory also shows, through methodical analysis set in fluid prose, that Stalin's worst excesses--such as the bloody collectivization of agriculture--did little to spur growth. Economic development stagnated after 1970, as vital resources were diverted to the military and as a Soviet leadership lacking in original thought pursued wasteful investments.

Customer Reviews:

3.5 stars, interesting, but not easy to read.......2003-12-24

The Soviet Union was the perfect failure, so said no shortage of people during and especially after its lifespan. So to argue the opposite, as Robert Allen's new book does, certainly presents a provocative hypothesis. Allen's argument is that from 1928 to 1970, the Soviet Union was one of the world's fastest growing economies, with few rivals in the world. By contrast, the high rate of growth under the last tsars was not sustainable. Collectivization seems to have encouraged industrial growth, though not enough to cancel out the horrible loss of lives from the 1932-33 famine. Unfortunately, unwise investment decisions in the seventies and eighties lead to rapidly falling growth rates and the collapse of the system.

Allen's argument does not start off well, as he seems to separate Russian development from Europe altogether. This coincides with Marshall Poe's argument that Russia shouldn't be considered European at all. This is misleading. It is true that in terms of poverty, rural population and demographic structure, Russia was behind the rest of Europe. But this does not mean that it was radically different from it. Russia is Christian, not Muslim. Russian is a Slavic language, and Slavic languages are European ones. Serfdom and feudalism are European institutions distinct from Ottoman and Moghul ones. However Allen soon gets back on track. The essential fact of comparative economic performance is that the high-income core generally stays the same, while those outside it fall further behind (relatively). Occasionally a country is able to enter the high-core club, like Japan, and occasionally another country is expelled, like Argentina. Given this stability, the Soviet Union's success from 1928 to 1970, where it outperformed all other developing countries except Japan, looks more impressive.

But wasn't economic growth high under the tsars? Surely would it not have reached the heights held by Western Europe? Clearly not, says Allen, since that would require an average 3.3 % growth rate from 1913 to 1989, a rate only held by one country, Japan. More to the point the Tsarist economic strategy faced severe problems. Russia's literacy rates were well below Japan's. Much of the growth in agriculture was the result of the wheat boom. Had Russia continued to be a wheat exporter it would have faced the disaster of the collapse of wheat prices in the Depression. Indeed, it would have made it worse. Argentina's own wheat boom did not last, and even wealthy Australia faced relative decline. Meanwhile the bulk of the railroad boom was over by 1913, while attempts to encourage a cotton industry were muddled by misguided protectionism.

Allen then discusses the crisis of the NEP. Given the limits of Soviet soil, agricultural output could not be easily raised until the fifties, when fertilizers became readily available. On the other hand agricultural productivity could be increased by mechanization and the now surplus agricultural labour could be diverted into industry. Potentially there is no conflict by increasing the investment needed for mass industrialization and increasing consumption. Both can increase at the same time. For Allen a key element to the 1928-1939 period was the use of "soft budget" constraints. Instead of basing the number of workers on simple budgetary constraints, constantly raising targets and increasing the demand for workers could increase growth enough that it would compensate for the deviations from strict accounting. Collectivization's contribution to this process was not the increasing of agricultural production; indeed, it dropped dramatically. Instead it encouraged, or more accurately forced, rural-urban migration and the growth of industry. Rather ironically the mass slaughter of horses to protest collectivization was not an unmitigated disaster, since it diverted grain from a rather "inefficient" animal. At the same time the Soviet Union benefiting from slower population growth. Much of this, of course, was the result of Stalinist terror, though nearly three times more important was the result of the Second World War. But even more important was the relatively quick fertility transition. Had it more resembled India the former Soviet Union would have had a 1989 population of 825 million. Allen then goes on to discuss standards of living from 1928 to 1939. They did seem to increase during this period. Previous studies suggested that they fell or stagnated, but Allen makes the reasonable argument that the index numbers they used miscalculated inflation and the effect of rural-urban migration.

Book Description

A world we have lost, in beautiful photographs and moving words.

Life in the steep hills of Appalachia has changed more in the last twenty years than in the previous two hundred. Long a region of farmers, burley tobacco, cattle, copious gardens, durable traditions, and hard-working families, it has become a region of retirees, developers, young urban escapees, and new highways. Aware of the transformation, Tim Barnwell set out to document the lives of the people in the land he grew up in. His sensitive portraits, landscapes, and farm scenes, and his penetrating oral histories give us an entrée into a life characterized by straightforward joys, hardships, isolation, and independence. It is a way of life we will not see again. 100 duotone photographs.

Customer Reviews:

The Old Days Are Still Here.......2005-09-18

Tim Barnwell has done an excellent job of choosing pictures for this book. It's in black and white and is well done. The past comes back quickly in our minds. It's hard to believe that people still live like this in our day and time much less that they choose to live this way.

Appalachia hasn't changed much over the years when it comes to the rural areas. These people look like they could have lived a hundred years ago instead of the 1980's! Gardening, quilting, plowing and haymaking are still going on today but it seems much easier in the modern world then these pictures show.

The people remind me of my grandparents. They make me want to go visit them. I'm glad there are people who want to remember and pass on the old ways.

Any one interested in farming and rural things will enjoy seeing this book. The conversations are very real and believeable even in today's world.

Barnwell's Magnificent Portraits.......2004-12-11

The quiet pictures in Tim Barnwell's The Face of Appalachia are full of small revelations. Ernest Rector, a fiercely intense elderly man, glares at the camera. One arm supports a large portrait of Jesus. The other cradles a framed magazine cover showing Johnny Cash with his wife, June Carter. You'd think he was encircling his family.

"When Bill Taylor was sick," Rector recalls, "a bunch of us went over to his place and shucked and put up seven hundred bushels of corn so his hogs would have something to eat over the winter. We didn't get a penny for it, and didn't expect it either. ...Today, if you were dying of thirst, you couldn't get a man to give you a drink of water for less than a dollar."

That story has nothing-and everything-to do with that picture. It's one of 85 brief oral histories Bramwell has appended to the more than 100 duotone portraits and landscapes here. This captivating book makes you wish more photographers wrote down what the people they picture have to say.

Barnwell's studious, scrupulous achievement is worth a long look.

Terrific, truthful portrayal of Appalachia.......2003-11-30

Wow! What can I say. This is one beautiful book. I'm 70 and grew up living this lifestyle. I still have a farm here in Kentucky. Finally there is someone who "gets it" and shows Appalachia as it really is. Mr. Barnwell understands the people and connects with them. Through touching photographs and captivating conversations he portrays the heart and soul of the region and it's people. You know, this is how people across this great country used to live, it's just that it hung on here longer due to the isolation. So if you want to see how you father, mother, grandparents, and great grandparents lived, take a look at this book. It is one of a kind from what I've seen. I can identify with every scene, but I think folks everywhere can too, even if they weren't raised here. I think great pictures can transcend culture and be meaningful to anyone with an appreciation of life. It's one of the prettiest done books I've seen as well-great print quality and design. Folks will look back on this a hundred years from now and realize what a masterpiece of work Mr. Barnwell has created, capturing this life the way he did. I highly recommend it!

Face of Appalachia-One Terrific Photo Book.......2003-11-18

This new book is a one-of-a kind masterpiece of photographic work. There are a hundred or so photographs and they show a true view of life in the Appalachian region. They are timeless and haunting. There is a wonderful section in the back called "Oral Histories" where each person photographed tells a story about their life-which is captivating in itself. That, combined with the top-notch photographs, makes this a unique treat-beautiful images and intriguing stories from real lives. It will appeal to photographers and non-photographers alike. The images look like they could have been taken in the 1940's, but are from the last 25 years or so. Mr. Barnwell obviously spent much time getting to know these people, even being invited into their homes to record private moments in their lives. They are not the stereotypical views most photographers from outside the area do, or the exploitive poor-white-trash portrayed by other photographers like Shelby Lee Adams. But they are not simply a romantic view of days gone by, either. Rather they capture the true heart and soul of these amazing people-showing the beauty and the flaws in unflinching detail. The images are not only stunning but extremely well reproduced. The book is well organized, beautifully designed, and has wonderful production qualities. It's also a bargain compared to prices of similar quality photo books I've bought.

Driven from the Land: The Story of the Dust Bowl (Great Journeys)

Average customer rating:

Driven from the Land: The Story of the Dust Bowl (Great Journeys)
Milton Meltzer
Manufacturer: Benchmark Books (NY)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0761409688

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