PUZZLED AMERICA

A novelist turned journalist (or is it ""returned""?). Sherwood Anderson ties the depression to the human equation in an illuminating book recounting his experiences up against the people themselves, in an investigatory trip through the industrial and agricultural South, the Tennessee Valley, the Middle West, the Northwest. He talks -- and listens -- to share croppers, tenant farmers, men and women of the open road, strikers in coal mines, mechanics, politicians in the making, and so on. Interesting from the sociological standpoint, from the economic standpoint (though he makes no attempt to interpret his findings), and from the purely human angle. Easy reading -- and a new presentation of ""puzzled America"".