5 ms·

The rich, weird, and frustrating world of Depression-era travel guides

101 points by samizdis 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jchw 5y ago
https://archive.is/UfciX https://archive.is/UfciX
bawolff 5y ago
I wonder if in the depression era, people who could not afford to travel read travel books as a fantasy to see what a different place was like, not as a literal travel book.
- 6f8986c3 5y ago
  Yes, they did! My grandparents talked about the Depression a lot while growing up. Books like this were also incredibly useful for when you did travel, though. Before the Internet, the way you learned about a place was through books. If you were headed to Wisconsin, there was no "Ok CIA, what's the best cheeseburger on this freeway?". You either stumbled across something while you were driving, or found it in a book. While there are great things about the information age, one downside is that hidden gems tend to be un-hidden at speed, and rapidly loose their lustre as they attempt to expand to absorb the demand.
  - tardismechanic 5y ago
    > "Ok CIA, what's the best cheeseburger on this freeway?" Haha good one
    - 6f8986c3 5y ago
      I just want our intelligence agencies to kick out a website so we can use them as a taxpayer-funded backup service for personal information. Me: "Hey, CIA? My ex-girlfriend once sent me a message about her favorite Indian restaurant. I'd really like to try it, but deleted all of our messages like five years ago." CIA: "Got you fam. It's actually Nepalese..."
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        Funny, they could put Backblaze (also currently on the homepage, hence the association) out of business.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - ioseph 5y ago
      That particular example is absurd, but for a time the CIA World Factbook was one of the best online resource for information about countries
      - anovikov 5y ago
        It still is. One of the very few non-bullshit sources that aggregates data in comparable way and does not confuse apples and oranges.
      - paganel 5y ago
        Present-day Google Maps was initially funded by the CIA through one of their (I suppose many) investment vehicles. I’m on mobile and I’m too lazy to search for links but that information is easily searchable.
        polytely 5y ago
        If I remember correctly, Google Earth originally came from In-Q-Tel which is the investment arm of the CIA.
        dredmorbius 5y ago
        "Keyhole". Same as the codename for the CIA's Earth-oriented remote-sensing satellites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth
      - npteljes 5y ago
        Yeah the NSA would be a better. But CIA works too
  - actually_a_dog 5y ago
    I think you actually mean FBI. :P CIA only has jurisdiction outside the US. Although, in context of the joke, NSA would make more sense.
    - vmception 5y ago
      It’s not so clear cut and Congress randomly assigns and reduces duties of random agencies. For example, the FBI has global jurisdiction over cyber matters and that agency specifically will send agents physically to other countries to coordinate with local law enforcement, seize assets and affect arrests They’re all watching I don’t think anything will really change until other countries are doing the same to us. Like imagine law enforcement from the House of Saud showing up at your door alongside local US police and they arrest you and eventually ship you off to Saudi Arabia all because a data packet passed through their borders. That’s allot of people’s experience with the US right now.
      - actually_a_dog 5y ago
        Huh, I didn't know FBI investigated all cybercrime. But, yeah, there are all kinds of weird jurisdictional carve-outs for other agencies. FBI = domestic, CIA = international is probably 98% correct, though. "Good enough for government work," as the saying goes, yeah?
        vmception 5y ago
        Hard to quantify, I just can't rely on that delineation. Congress doesn't even know what laws they pass and isn't scrutinizing like "wait, enthusiasts expect the FBI to do domestic things, unless you rewrite this Defense Spending Bill we're all blocking it from getting out of committee", instead, defense contractors pre-write whatever they want that expands the role of the agency they already have the most contacts with so they land the ensuing contract. There isn't any law or constitutional issue that would add a redundancy to limiting the change of these agency charters. And finally, we just have to assume that these autonomous agencies with $10bn annual budgets are operating professionally within the bounds of their mandates.
- xwdv 5y ago
  People do this now with Instagram. There are many people who will never travel far in their life.
  - sammalloy 5y ago
    40% of Americans have never left the country, and 11% have never left their state.
- prawn 5y ago
  I travel a lot, but always want more and use travel research as a bit of a coping mechanism (especially researching warm places when my local weather is cold). I spend a lot of time in Google Maps looking for interesting terrain, checking driving distances and so on. Apple's Maps app on desktop can be excellent for something like Utah's Canyonlands. Semblance of 3D plus reasonable detail means you can explore, look for routes down cliffs, etc. All the orange rock just feels warm to browse from afar - ha!
- caymanjim 5y ago
  I've traveled a fair bit, but I've read travel books for many more places than I've ever been. Mostly Paul Theroux, Graham Greene, Pico Iyer. I've gone to a lot of the places I've read about, but will always read more than I travel.
- vmception 5y ago
  Lovecraft Country sporadically portrays this
perihelions 5y ago
Some links to archive.org scans: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27556986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27556986
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
beerandt 5y ago
The Atlantic, complaining about "sprawling" longform writing? Immediately after an especially pointless yet drawn-out intro. Is it supposed to be one of those jokes that either aren't funny or you don't get?
samizdis 5y ago
I am fascinated by this: >The FWP [Federal Writers' Project] was a work-relief program, and its primary mission was to help writers survive the Depression, while putting cash into circulation and contributing, however modestly, to the economic recovery. But it was also a literary endeavor of unprecedented scale. When the FWP was finally dissolved, along with the rest of the WPA, in 1943, Time magazine gave it the epitaph “the biggest literary project in history”—a claim that does not seem to be disputed. > ... the FWP managed to produce at least 1,000 publications and gather reams of unused material. (Some of these manuscripts, especially individual life histories and the testimonials of formerly enslaved people, would be treasured and interrogated by future scholars.) Each successful publication chipped away at assumptions about the FWP, proving that it was no hopeless boondoggle for failed writers and unimaginative hacks. Reviewers were generally impressed, finding that the books far surpassed their expectations. I'd be keen to see this sort of visionary thinking revived with the aim of restoring town hall/local journalism, currently in a parlous state now that newspapers no longer receive meaningful advertising revenues.
- andylynch 5y ago
  Not sure about US initiatives, but in the UK and more recently NZ there is a 'public service' or 'local democracy' initiative where journalists are jointly funded to cover local news, in partnership with a public service broadcaster (i.e the BBC, or Radio New Zealand) - see https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/bbc-confident-others-will-follow-as-new-zealand-sets-up-own-local-democracy-reporters-scheme/ https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/bbc-confident-others-will-fol... . It's still early but is promising.
ggm 5y ago
Mass Observation in the UK is an entirely different, but contemporary approach to documenting people's views of the period. Diaries mostly, from a range of people across the UK in peace and wartime. They didn't harvest these after the fact, they actively recruited people at the time. Now archived at Sussex university. Angus Calder's work on ww2 "the peoples war" leveraged it. http://www.massobs.org.uk/ http://www.massobs.org.uk/ it would be interesting to compare the underlying patterns. The WPA had a leftist view, so did Mass Observation

101 points by samizdis 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jchw 5y ago

https://archive.is/UfciX https://archive.is/UfciX

bawolff 5y ago

I wonder if in the depression era, people who could not afford to travel read travel books as a fantasy to see what a different place was like, not as a literal travel book.

6f8986c3 5y ago
Yes, they did! My grandparents talked about the Depression a lot while growing up. Books like this were also incredibly useful for when you did travel, though. Before the Internet, the way you learned about a place was through books. If you were headed to Wisconsin, there was no "Ok CIA, what's the best cheeseburger on this freeway?". You either stumbled across something while you were driving, or found it in a book. While there are great things about the information age, one downside is that hidden gems tend to be un-hidden at speed, and rapidly loose their lustre as they attempt to expand to absorb the demand.
- tardismechanic 5y ago
  > "Ok CIA, what's the best cheeseburger on this freeway?" Haha good one
  - 6f8986c3 5y ago
    I just want our intelligence agencies to kick out a website so we can use them as a taxpayer-funded backup service for personal information. Me: "Hey, CIA? My ex-girlfriend once sent me a message about her favorite Indian restaurant. I'd really like to try it, but deleted all of our messages like five years ago." CIA: "Got you fam. It's actually Nepalese..."
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Funny, they could put Backblaze (also currently on the homepage, hence the association) out of business.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - ioseph 5y ago
    That particular example is absurd, but for a time the CIA World Factbook was one of the best online resource for information about countries
    - anovikov 5y ago
      It still is. One of the very few non-bullshit sources that aggregates data in comparable way and does not confuse apples and oranges.
    - paganel 5y ago
      Present-day Google Maps was initially funded by the CIA through one of their (I suppose many) investment vehicles. I’m on mobile and I’m too lazy to search for links but that information is easily searchable.
      - polytely 5y ago
        If I remember correctly, Google Earth originally came from In-Q-Tel which is the investment arm of the CIA.
      - dredmorbius 5y ago
        "Keyhole". Same as the codename for the CIA's Earth-oriented remote-sensing satellites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth
    - npteljes 5y ago
      Yeah the NSA would be a better. But CIA works too
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  I think you actually mean FBI. :P CIA only has jurisdiction outside the US. Although, in context of the joke, NSA would make more sense.
  - vmception 5y ago
    It’s not so clear cut and Congress randomly assigns and reduces duties of random agencies. For example, the FBI has global jurisdiction over cyber matters and that agency specifically will send agents physically to other countries to coordinate with local law enforcement, seize assets and affect arrests They’re all watching I don’t think anything will really change until other countries are doing the same to us. Like imagine law enforcement from the House of Saud showing up at your door alongside local US police and they arrest you and eventually ship you off to Saudi Arabia all because a data packet passed through their borders. That’s allot of people’s experience with the US right now.
    - actually_a_dog 5y ago
      Huh, I didn't know FBI investigated all cybercrime. But, yeah, there are all kinds of weird jurisdictional carve-outs for other agencies. FBI = domestic, CIA = international is probably 98% correct, though. "Good enough for government work," as the saying goes, yeah?
      - vmception 5y ago
        Hard to quantify, I just can't rely on that delineation. Congress doesn't even know what laws they pass and isn't scrutinizing like "wait, enthusiasts expect the FBI to do domestic things, unless you rewrite this Defense Spending Bill we're all blocking it from getting out of committee", instead, defense contractors pre-write whatever they want that expands the role of the agency they already have the most contacts with so they land the ensuing contract. There isn't any law or constitutional issue that would add a redundancy to limiting the change of these agency charters. And finally, we just have to assume that these autonomous agencies with $10bn annual budgets are operating professionally within the bounds of their mandates.
xwdv 5y ago
People do this now with Instagram. There are many people who will never travel far in their life.
- sammalloy 5y ago
  40% of Americans have never left the country, and 11% have never left their state.
prawn 5y ago
I travel a lot, but always want more and use travel research as a bit of a coping mechanism (especially researching warm places when my local weather is cold). I spend a lot of time in Google Maps looking for interesting terrain, checking driving distances and so on. Apple's Maps app on desktop can be excellent for something like Utah's Canyonlands. Semblance of 3D plus reasonable detail means you can explore, look for routes down cliffs, etc. All the orange rock just feels warm to browse from afar - ha!
caymanjim 5y ago
I've traveled a fair bit, but I've read travel books for many more places than I've ever been. Mostly Paul Theroux, Graham Greene, Pico Iyer. I've gone to a lot of the places I've read about, but will always read more than I travel.
vmception 5y ago
Lovecraft Country sporadically portrays this

perihelions 5y ago

Some links to archive.org scans: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27556986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27556986

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

beerandt 5y ago

The Atlantic, complaining about "sprawling" longform writing? Immediately after an especially pointless yet drawn-out intro. Is it supposed to be one of those jokes that either aren't funny or you don't get?

samizdis 5y ago

I am fascinated by this: >The FWP [Federal Writers' Project] was a work-relief program, and its primary mission was to help writers survive the Depression, while putting cash into circulation and contributing, however modestly, to the economic recovery. But it was also a literary endeavor of unprecedented scale. When the FWP was finally dissolved, along with the rest of the WPA, in 1943, Time magazine gave it the epitaph “the biggest literary project in history”—a claim that does not seem to be disputed. > ... the FWP managed to produce at least 1,000 publications and gather reams of unused material. (Some of these manuscripts, especially individual life histories and the testimonials of formerly enslaved people, would be treasured and interrogated by future scholars.) Each successful publication chipped away at assumptions about the FWP, proving that it was no hopeless boondoggle for failed writers and unimaginative hacks. Reviewers were generally impressed, finding that the books far surpassed their expectations. I'd be keen to see this sort of visionary thinking revived with the aim of restoring town hall/local journalism, currently in a parlous state now that newspapers no longer receive meaningful advertising revenues.

andylynch 5y ago
Not sure about US initiatives, but in the UK and more recently NZ there is a 'public service' or 'local democracy' initiative where journalists are jointly funded to cover local news, in partnership with a public service broadcaster (i.e the BBC, or Radio New Zealand) - see https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/bbc-confident-others-will-follow-as-new-zealand-sets-up-own-local-democracy-reporters-scheme/ https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/bbc-confident-others-will-fol... . It's still early but is promising.

ggm 5y ago

Mass Observation in the UK is an entirely different, but contemporary approach to documenting people's views of the period. Diaries mostly, from a range of people across the UK in peace and wartime. They didn't harvest these after the fact, they actively recruited people at the time. Now archived at Sussex university. Angus Calder's work on ww2 "the peoples war" leveraged it. http://www.massobs.org.uk/ http://www.massobs.org.uk/ it would be interesting to compare the underlying patterns. The WPA had a leftist view, so did Mass Observation