United States. Work Projects Administration Audiobooks

United States. Work Projects Administration

Best known as the New Deal agency behind the Federal Writers' Project, this government body helped produce guidebooks, oral histories, and documentary records that still shape how readers understand American life in the 1930s and early 1940s. Its books blend public-service purpose with a remarkable record of local culture, labor, and everyday experience.

About the author

Created during the Great Depression, the Work Projects Administration was the name used from 1939 to 1943 for the federal agency more widely known as the WPA, or Works Progress Administration. While it is famous for building roads, parks, schools, and other public works, it also supported major cultural programs in writing, art, theater, and history.

For readers, its most lasting legacy is the publishing work produced under projects such as the Federal Writers' Project. These efforts brought together writers, editors, researchers, and interviewers to create state guides, local histories, folklore collections, and firsthand narratives, including the well-known slave narrative interviews. Many books credited to "United States. Work Projects Administration" were collaborative government publications rather than the work of a single individual.

That makes this "author" unusual but important: it represents a public institution that helped preserve voices, places, and stories that might otherwise have been lost. On an audiobook shelf, works issued under this name offer a vivid window into the language, geography, and social history of the United States during the New Deal era.

United States. Work Projects Administration

34 Audiobooks

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 1

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume I, Alabama Narratives

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XIV, South Carolina Narratives, Part 3

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XII, Ohio Narratives

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XVI, Texas Narratives, Part 1

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XI, North Carolina Narratives, Part 1

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XV, Tennessee Narratives

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XIV, South Carolina Narratives, Part 4

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 6

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 4

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 7

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 3

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume III, Florida Narratives

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 5

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XIV, South Carolina Narratives, Part 1

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume VII, Kentucky Narratives

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume VI, Kansas Narratives

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XIII, Oklahoma Narratives

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XIV, South Carolina Narratives, Part 2

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XVI, Texas Narratives, Part 4

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XVI, Texas Narratives, Part 2

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. Administrative Files Selected Records Bearing on the History of the Slave Narratives

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XVI, Texas Narratives, Part 3

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 2

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume V, Indiana Narratives

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XI, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume XVII, Virginia Narratives

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 3

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume VIII, Maryland Narratives

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume IX, Mississippi Narratives

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume X, Missouri Narratives

About the author