Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee

A landmark work of American photojournalism renowned for its fusion of social conscience and artistic radicality (New York Times)

In the summer of 1936, James Agee and Walker Evans set out on assignment for Fortune magazine to explore the daily lives of sharecroppers in the South. Their journey would prove an extraordinary collaboration and a watershed literary event when, in 1941, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was first published to enormous critical acclaim. This unsparing record of place, of the people who shaped the land and the rhythm of their lives, is intensely moving and unrelentingly honest, and today--recognized by the New York Public Library as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century--it stands as a poetic tract of its time. With an elegant new design as well as a sixty-four-page photographic prologue featuring archival reproductions of Evans's classic images, this historic edition offers readers a window into a remarkable slice of American history.

JAMES AGEE (1909-55) was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and was hired as a staff writer at Fortune in 1932. Two years later, his collection of poetry, Permit Me Voyage, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. His book about Alabama tenant farmers during the Great Depression, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, appeared in 1941. Agee was later renowned for his film criticism, which appeared regularly in The Nation and Time, and for co-writing the screenplays for The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter. He died two years before his major work of fiction, A Death in the Family, was published and won the Pulitzer Prize.

Photographer WALKER EVANS (1903-75) was on loan from the Resettlement Administration when he began collaborating with James Agee. He joined the staff of Time in 1945 and shortly afterward became an editor at Fortune, where he stayed for the next two decades. In 1964, he became a professor at the Yale University School of Art, teaching until his death in 1975.

ADAM HASLETT (introduction) is the author of Union Atlantic and You Are Not a Stranger Here.

JOHN SUMMERS (editor) is the editor in chief of The Baffler.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780330302852
ISBN 10	033030285X
Title	Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Author	James Agee
Series	Picador Classics S
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Pan Macmillan
Year published	1988-01-08
Number of pages	496
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.