Between 1935 and 1943, the United States government commissioned forty-four photographers to capture American faces, along with living and working conditions, across the country. Nearly 180,000 photographs were taken - 4,000 in Maryland - and they are now preserved in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Constance B. Schulz presents a selection of these images in Maryland in Black and White. Maryland in the 1930s and early '40s truly represented a microcosm of America, a middle ground where beach and mountain, north and south, urban and rural, black and white, farmer and businessman, rich and poor, young and old met. This period also witnessed a turning point in the state's history. The pace and nature of change varied from region to region, but even in areas that seemed most resistant to it-the Chesapeake Bay, where oyster tongers harvested their catch using methods unchanged for centuries, or the mountains and streams of Garrett County, where the seasons timelessly repeated themselves - the momentum toward a modern economy, influenced if not dominated by urban and national concerns, had significant impact. Within these pages, the farms and coal fields of 1930s and '40s Western Maryland, the tobacco fields of Southern Maryland, watermen in wooden boats along the Eastern Shore, and smiling couples dancing at a wartime senior prom come back to life. These photographs reveal places we know but scarcely recognize and give us another look at the people of "the greatest generation."

It is no accident that the Southern Association for Women Historians enjoys the founding date of 1970. After extended and often bitter engagement with entrenched sexism in the decades following World War II, women historians found their voices and crafted a means by which to be heard. The years between 1970 and 1980 represented a decade of optimism for women who sought equality in the workplace. Professional women, professors of history most especially, found hope in organizations such as the SAWH, created to address issues of visibility, legitimacy, and equality in historical associations and in employment.

In "Clio's Southern Sisters," Constance B. Schulz and Elizabeth Hayes Turner collect the stories of the women who helped to found and lead the organization during its first twenty years. These women give evidence, in strong and effective language, of the experiences that shaped their entree into the profession. They vividly describe the point at which they experienced the shift in their lives and in the lives of those around them that led toward a new day for women in the history profession.

Some found that discrimination followed them like a shadow, and the pain of those days still remains with them. Others sought their graduate education in institutions where women were welcomed and where professors valued their work and encouraged their success. Yet when they entered the job market, they found that some employers flatly refused to consider them because they were women. Lost job opportunities for women were linked in tangled ways to the prevailing image of women as less desirable as colleagues, or as intellectually weaker than their male counterparts.

Through the SAWH, these women were able to make changes from within the profession. They felt an obligation to help the next generation of women scholars. In the midst of a national movement to end sex discrimination through legislation, to increase women's consciousness-raising efforts, and to acknowledge the economic realities of women in the workforce, these women came together to form an organization that could enable them to have the careers they deserved. This timely volume will be appreciated by all those who reaped the benefits for which these "southern sisters" fought so hard.

Initially commissioned to record the progress of Pittsburgh's Renaissance I, these unforgettable black-and-white photographs of Roy Stryker's Pittsburgh Photographic Library (PPL) capture the city in a state of flux. They reveal a union of opposites--the suited wonderment of the downtown businessman with the easy grace and competence of a shirtless construction worker balanced high over his head; the anonymity and isolation of planned housing with the belief in expansion and renewal; the energy and excitement of a city on the move with the traditions of the established elite; the juxtaposition between the growing optimism about the ability of technology to improve our lives; and the traditional steel and other heavy smokestack industries that still dominated the region. The Renaissance was seen as a way for Pittsburgh to keep abreast of modern urban life and to preserve its economic position, but the rapid development of a white suburban middle class was sapping the very essence of the personalized downtown neighborhoods. These photographers have captured the convergence of destruction and rejuvenation that is the essence of an urban renaissance--all the anxiety and hope of the decade is reflected in these poignant photographs.

Constance Schulz's fascinating essay on the story of the PPL, in order to present a full picture of the political and civic goals, achievements, and failings of the project, provides a thorough discussion of the background of the Pittsburgh Photographic Library, putting into perspective the Allegheny Conference's purpose for initiating the PPL, Roy Stryker's own vision and work, as well as those of the photographers who worked for Stryker on the project, and the politics that undermined the full implementation of it. Clark M. Thomas's accompanying narrative offers an eclectic range of facts and fascinating bits of the city's history and neighborhood lore, as well as noting important political and economic episodes. It also provides a glimpse into the often underrepresented lives of minorities and women in the region's development. Anyone moved by the incredible social upheaval and expansion that occurred in cities across the nation in the 1950s following years of depression and war will want to have this collection.

"I was supposed to be taking pictures to show that this was a great country and I was finding out it really was. . . . I didn't know it at the time, but I was having a last look at America as it used to be."--John Vachon Kansans of the 1930s and 1940s lived through more sweeping changes than any other generation past or present. Destructive forces of nature, an economy gone awry, and a devastating--and ironically, economically renewing--war left the world irrevocably altered. In this captivating collection, some of America's best-known documentary photographers provide a valuable glimpse into that tumultuous time. Constance Schulz has brought together a diverse array of photographs from three extensive documentary projects: the Farm Security Administration, the Office of War Information, and Standard Oil of New Jersey. The result is a unique visual record of American life by photographers Arthur Rothstein, John Vachon, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, Edwin and Louise Rosskam, and Charles Rotkin. Collectively, their work has immortalized the faces and emotions of FSA-aided farmers and the harsh lives of coal miners, dust-bowl debris and tumbleweeds, a failed bank and a thriving stockyard, locomotives and Mexican-American railroad workers, oil derricks, wheat country, black cavalry troops, and 4-H Club fairs. In his enlightening introduction, environmental historian Donald Worster provides historical context for the images. Examining state, national, and international events from 1930 to 1950, he explores the agricultural, business, social, political, and environmental climates as well as the composition of the state's population and its inevitable shift away from rural life toward urbanization and industrialization. Schulz also supplies fundamental information on the photographers and the photographic projects. Originally created as a means to promote government and business programs, the FSA, OWI, and Standard Oil photographs--most never before published--are an excellent source for individuals and communities searching for a visual record of their local heritage during two of the most crucial decades in American history.

An introductory high school textbook surveying the history of Maryland, with emphasis on the blacks, women, immigrants, and other special groups contributing to the variety of its population.