... impressive.

... engaging.

Borchert, through a series of biographical chapters on some of the best-known authors, engrossingly shows how the New Deal recognized art as labor and why that model should be reinvigorated today.

... a dynamic and discriminating cultural history that speaks to both readers who know something about the project and those who don't. Like the American Guides these Depression-era writers worked on, Borchert's book teems with colorful characters, scenic byways and telling anecdotes; his own writing style is full of 'verve' — the much prized quality that so many of the guides themselves possessed.

... as inviting, compelling, comprehensive, and endearingly quirky as the volumes it celebrates and explains.

... terrific.

Republic of Detours...shows that when a good writer meets a subject for which he or she has a passion, the result is almost always going to be fine, no matter that others have treated it before.

... fascinating and highly readable.

Poet W. H. Auden characterized the Depression Era’s Federal Writers’ Project as “one of the noblest and most absurd undertakings ever attempted by a state.” Borchert’s comprehensive history of that project’s American Guides series amply bears out Auden’s assessment.

A well-documented, engaging history of a program that treated writers as valuable citizens..

... wide-ranging and deeply researched.