Times of Sorrow & Hope Documenting Everyday Life in Pennsylvania During the Depression and World War II : a Photographic Record

Between 1935 and 1946 a group of photographers working for the federal government fanned out across the country to record American life in pictures. This massive photographic project, carried out primarily under the auspices of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the Office of War Information (OWI) and later preserved at the Library of Congress, was unrivaled in scope: no comparable attempt to document life in this country has ever been made. The Times of Sorrow and Hope features 150 selected images from the approximately 6,000 Pennsylvania photographs. These images cover themes ranging from coal mining, steelworkers, and women in wartime industries to cities and small towns, farm life, family life, and life among the Amish and Mennonites. The book also includes an essay introducing the FSA's own project, an introduction to the catalog of the entire collection of Pennsylvania photographs, and a historical essay on Pennsylvania during the Great Depression and World War II.