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"Let Them Grow" by Stanley Thomas Clough

(Library of Congress/Quirk Books)

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1.	Republican pundits open fire on Sarah Palin
2.	Clamor grows over CIA secrets
3.	Marking the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. nuclear meltdown
4.	As the Hollywood machine abandons L.A., its supporting workers struggle
5.	Lance Armstrong rides again? Maybe so

Thursday: The day in photos

Running with the bulls in Pamplona

Remembering Michael Jackson

Military operation in Afghanistan's Helmand province

Fans mourn Michael Jackson

Images from 'Posters for the People: Art of the WPA' by Ennis Carter

As president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt enlisted the United States in a massive course of self-betterment. Among the most obvious components of this effort were the infrastructure projects of the Works Progress Administration.

But self-improvement didn't stop with bridges and roads: The WPA encouraged Americans to get better. To get hired, eat more vegetables, brush their teeth, go to plays and the zoo, visit national parks, even to seek treatment for syphilis.

How did the WPA do this, exactly? With posters, hundreds of which have now been reprinted, in full color, in "Posters for the People: Art of the WPA" by Ennis Carter (Quirk Books: 216 pp., $50). --Carolyn Kellogg

"Let Them Grow" by Stanley Thomas Clough, Cleveland, Ohio, 1938. Silkscreen on board.