In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and on the eve of a national recession, New York Times writer Dan Barry launched a column about the everyday Americans who clean the hotel rooms, work in the mines, tend the beet fields, and experience the disasters firsthand. Complemented by color photographs, the 75 pieces here profile an Arkansas town determined to preserve its phone booth and reveal the mementoes that people have kept from 9/11, while offering perceptive portraits of an 18-year-old girl heading off to war, the pastor who baptized Jeffrey Dahmer, and even Meinhardt Raabe—the munchkin who declares the witch to be dead in The Wizard of Oz.