And Their Children After Them: The Legacy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: James Agee, Walker Evans, and the Rise and Fall of Cotton in the South

Amazing book, a must-read if you have even one ancestor that worked The Land. The author traces the descendants of the white cotton tenant farmers first profiled by James Agee during the Depression, to see whether their lots are better than tenant lives during the glory of King Cotton. The author explains where hillbillies come from; and that poor flatlanders identify three kinds of poverty: the Lord's poor, the Devil's poor, and people who couldn't be anything different than poor. Individual stories are balanced with historical views. At the conclusion, the author sharply speaks his own mind about greed in America.

2838. And Their Children After Them, by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson (read 17 Feb 1996) (Pulitzer Nonfiction prize for 1990) I read this on 17 Feb 1996 and said to myself: This book examines the people Agee wrote about in 1936, and their children. When Agee wrote about them they were tenant cotton farmers--now there is no cotton raised in the area! The names of the towns are changed. but it is, I believe, in southern Alabama. It is a poignant book, and describes real poverty still, but there is less than in 1936. And maybe less "community." This is a book Newt Gingrich and the crazy House freshmen should read--people who are so intent that those who cannot make it on their own should not make it.