Book Description

The Tennessee Valley Authority was a New Deal agency created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his first hundred days in office. At that time the region served by the Authority was one of the most economically depressed areas of the nation. TVA was charged not only to improve the navigability of the Tennessee River and to provide flood control and cheap electricity but also to help in improving the overall quality of life. Photography documented the efforts the agency took to meet this mandate. This book highlights the TVA's first thirty years and focuses on the talented photographers who snapped the images during the period 1933 to 1963. Primarily represented in this volume are Lewis Hine and Charles Krutch, whose work came to define the public image of TVA. Their photographs, providing a glimpse into the past, afford a view of a depressed region of the South as it was transformed into a place where one of the most technological advancements of our time, the atomic bomb, was created. Book jacket.