UP IN THE MORNING: Vermont Farm Families...

UP IN THE MORNING: Vermont Farm Families in the Thirties by Scott E. Hastings Jr. and Elsie R. Hastings (University Press of New England: $24.95; 160 pp., paperback original). This understated volume combines photographs from the collection of the Farm Security Administration with oral histories of men and women who survived the Depression on the land. These unflinching descriptions of physical toil contrast sharply with the recent portraits of Vermont by exurban yuppies who marvel over the zucchini and basil in their gardens. As Tom Slayton notes in his foreword, “Though we are tempted to romanticize and sentimentalize traditional Vermont, it is important to remember that it had its dignity, its darkness and its own worth. It was based not on nostalgia or sentiment but on work, the real fundamentalism of the time.”