Edited and annotated compilation of oral histories from the Federal Writers' Project of the 1930s Works Progress/Projects Administration (WPA) in the United States. These selections come mostly in the form of short passages that aspiring writers recorded from people in various parts of the United States during the onslaught and aftermath of the Great Depression. Banks's famous book is an indispensable part of the canon of American social history, and a testament to the efforts of recorders of local American histories in the 1930s. From the author's website: "First Person America brings together eighty oral histories gathered in the 1930's by the Federal Writers Project, including stories of a North Carolina patent medicine pitchman, a retired Oregon gold prospector, a Bahamian midwife from Florida, a Key West smuggler, Chicago jazz musicians, union organizers and others."
