Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America(Wiley & Sons) is about a handful of people in the 1930s and a glimpse of America at a turning point. They were caught up in an effort to describe America in a series of WPA travel guides. Through striking images and firsthand accounts, Soul of a People reveals their experiences and the most vivid excerpts from selected guides and interviews: Harlem schoolchildren, truckers, Chicago fishmongers, Cuban cigar makers, a Florida midwife, and Nebraskan meatpackers.

This book and the documentary film illuminate what it felt like to live that experience, and how it affected their lives and work afterward. 

Praise for Soul of a People:

"A wonderful and engaging book." - Robert Whitaker, author of On the Laps of Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for Justice That Remade a Nation

“David Taylor goes inside the project to give us intimate snapshots of the writers and what they saw and felt during that hard time. Soul of a People is a revealing and a valuable resource.” - Nick Taylor, author of American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA

"An excellent history..." - Washington City Paper

"An unmatched collective portrait of a people battered but not beaten by the Great Depression. Soul of a People should be mandatory reading as the storm clouds of hard times hover over us again."
- Bernard Weisberger, editor of The WPA Guide to America

"David Taylor's Soul of a People is a vivid reminder of two things: the creative power of America's government at its best and the remarkable richness and diversity of America's people." - Geoffrey C. Ward, author of The War

"With accessible prose, a wealth of detail and vintage photos, Taylor recounts the project and some of the writers who benefited from it -- and who benefited the nation with what they produced." - Richmond Times-Dispatch

"The WPA books in the American Guide Series ... were ... a splendid collective achievement, filled with material that might otherwise have been lost... [R]eaders, especially writers and editors, who have discovered the somewhat outdated volumes in recent decades have found them useful and illuminating, and even inspiring." - Wall Street Journal

"Taylor's book takes us back to the Depression days of the 1930s and reminds us that the state guides are still in use today." - Lincoln Journal Star

"The place to start learning about that remarkable era." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"An excellent study of the personalities behind the Federal Writers’ Project... [A]s the book makes clear, doing government work left many of the writers feeling conflicted, and the project was consistently under scrutiny by Congress for potentially harboring Communists, a hint of the McCarthy hearings that would come years later." - Mark Athitakis, American Fiction Notes