A Guide to Alaska by Merle Colby
Author: Merle Colby
Publisher: The Macmillan Company, New York, 1944
Sponsored by John W. Troy, Governor of Alaska
Hardcover
Page Count: 427
Condition: A very good copy, including the full dust cover in a protective wrap.
This is one of the famous WPA guides. In the Depression, the Works Progress Administration was a social program to reduce unemployment and build essential infrastructure. A smaller but critical arm of the WPA supported the arts. Unemployed writers were hired to, inter alia, write guides on certain topics of wide interest. Nelson Algren, the great Chicago writer, was charged to summarize midwestern foods, and his description of a German American picnic includes every food the Bickel family [of Books and Fields fame] ate in our 1970s outdoor feasts.
Part of the WPA output was a set of State guides. These were not travelogues but a recounting of the history and geography and society of the state. Many are beautifully written and there is a very active collectors’ market for them. Alaska was not, of course, a state at that point. But territories deserve to be anthologized, and so it was added. Given that it possessed the only American territory occupied by the enemy in World War 2, one can imagine a lot of interest in the volume when it was published in 1944. All the WPA guides have been reprinted, but this is an original, in very good condition. We hope you enjoy it.
Author: Merle Colby
Publisher: The Macmillan Company, New York, 1944
Sponsored by John W. Troy, Governor of Alaska
Hardcover
Page Count: 427
Condition: A very good copy, including the full dust cover in a protective wrap.
This is one of the famous WPA guides. In the Depression, the Works Progress Administration was a social program to reduce unemployment and build essential infrastructure. A smaller but critical arm of the WPA supported the arts. Unemployed writers were hired to, inter alia, write guides on certain topics of wide interest. Nelson Algren, the great Chicago writer, was charged to summarize midwestern foods, and his description of a German American picnic includes every food the Bickel family [of Books and Fields fame] ate in our 1970s outdoor feasts.
Part of the WPA output was a set of State guides. These were not travelogues but a recounting of the history and geography and society of the state. Many are beautifully written and there is a very active collectors’ market for them. Alaska was not, of course, a state at that point. But territories deserve to be anthologized, and so it was added. Given that it possessed the only American territory occupied by the enemy in World War 2, one can imagine a lot of interest in the volume when it was published in 1944. All the WPA guides have been reprinted, but this is an original, in very good condition. We hope you enjoy it.
Author: Merle Colby
Publisher: The Macmillan Company, New York, 1944
Sponsored by John W. Troy, Governor of Alaska
Hardcover
Page Count: 427
Condition: A very good copy, including the full dust cover in a protective wrap.
This is one of the famous WPA guides. In the Depression, the Works Progress Administration was a social program to reduce unemployment and build essential infrastructure. A smaller but critical arm of the WPA supported the arts. Unemployed writers were hired to, inter alia, write guides on certain topics of wide interest. Nelson Algren, the great Chicago writer, was charged to summarize midwestern foods, and his description of a German American picnic includes every food the Bickel family [of Books and Fields fame] ate in our 1970s outdoor feasts.
Part of the WPA output was a set of State guides. These were not travelogues but a recounting of the history and geography and society of the state. Many are beautifully written and there is a very active collectors’ market for them. Alaska was not, of course, a state at that point. But territories deserve to be anthologized, and so it was added. Given that it possessed the only American territory occupied by the enemy in World War 2, one can imagine a lot of interest in the volume when it was published in 1944. All the WPA guides have been reprinted, but this is an original, in very good condition. We hope you enjoy it.