The plan was as idealistic as it was audacious—take thousands of hard-up writers and put them to work charting a country on the brink of collapse, producing guidebooks to the then 48 states, plus folklore collections, biographies, and cookbooks. Founded in 1935, the Federal Writers' Project supported Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Studs Terkel, and John Cheever, but the organization also found itself embroiled in arguments regarding radical politics, racial inclusion, and the purpose of writing. As Scott Borchert explains, the FWP would reckon with the promises and failures of both the New Deal and the American experiment itself.

"With this whimsical, well-researched book, Borchert has done full justice to this forgotten literary achievement and the eccentric, often quarrelsome characters who created it."—Washington Post