Overview
"A stunning sequel to the James Agee—Walker Evans' classic, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. It is at times astonishing, at all times deeply moving."-Studs Terkel
"A book that reaches into this country's heart of darkness. . . . A tragically human story more telling than a thousand polls. The photographs by Mr. Williamson are eloquent."-Herbert Mitgang, New York Times
"Mr. Williamson's photos are spellbinding and should become instant classics."-John Elvin, Washington Times
In this paperback reissue, an author/photographer team returns to the land and families captured in James Agee and Walker Evans's inimitable masterwork Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, extending the project of conscience and chronicling the traumatic decline of King Cotton. In 1936, during a brief window of national attention to the topic, Fortune magazine commissioned from Agee and Evans a story on poverty among tenant farmers in Alabama. Agee was famously ambivalent in his role, calling himself a spy and ultimately delivering a book-length manuscript unpublishable in magazine form. With this continuation of Agee and Evans's work, Maharidge and Williamson not only uncover some surprising historical secrets relating to the families and to Agee himself, but also effectively lay to rest Agee's fear that his work, from lack of reverence or resilience, would be but another offense to the humanity of its subjects.
Williamson's 90-part photo essay includes updates alongside Evans' classic originals.
Dale Maharidge (Homeland, Journey to Nowhere) has been a visiting professor of journalism at Columbia University and Stanford, and a NiemanFellow at Harvard University in 1998.
Michael Williamson is a photographer for the Washington Post who won a second Pulitzer for his coverage of the war in Kosovo.
A poignant, real-life multigenerational saga of what happened to three families in the Depression South and the unrelenting hardship of picking cotton.