Poor White

"Nothing quite like it has ever been done in America. . . . It is so vivid, so full of insight, so shiningly life-like and glowing, that the book is lifted into a category all its own," wrote H.L. Mencken, speaking of Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio," Anderson, he said, is "America's Most Distinctive Novelist." "Poor White," which Anderson wrote in 1920, explores the spiritual and emotional sterility of a success-oriented machine age. Like all of Anderson's tales, it's an important social commentary, and not to be overlooked.