Includes bibliographical references (pages 551-555) and index.

When President Roosevelt took the oath of office in 1933, he was facing a devastated nation. Four years into the Great Depression, 13 million American workers were jobless. What people wanted were jobs, not handouts, and in 1935, after a variety of temporary relief measures, a permanent nationwide jobs program was created--the Works Progress Administration, which would forever change the physical landscape and the social policies of the United States. The WPA lasted for eight years, spent $11 billion, and employed 8 and a half million men and women. The agency combined the urgency of putting people back to work with a vision of physically rebuilding America. Its workers laid roads, erected dams, bridges, tunnels, and airports, but also performed concerts, staged plays, and painted murals. Sixty years later, there is almost no area in America that does not bear some visible mark of its presence.--From publisher description.