"This journalistic documentary of sharecroppers in depression-era Alabama has a polarizing effect on readers: is this a deadpan just-the facts-ma’am account of the lives of these families, or a voyeuristic, dehumanizing invasion? To me it’s arresting, highly emotional, and brilliant."

"Forrester was the oldest of 8 children, in Depression-Era Liverpool. No school, no medicine, no hope - her life was exactly as mine would have been, had I not had the incredibly good fortune to be born after the introduction of the NHS and the Welfare State. I read it as a direct letter from her to me. It politicised me instantly."

"The wonderful, ill-fated Carole Lombard stars in this perfect, slick Depression-era romantic comedy. I like that obsolete terms such as “forgotten man”—which in this case refers to the homeless William Powell—can live on forever in the movies along with the stars who utter them. Thankfully, New York no longer has Hoovervilles, but I regret that the madcap Manhattan socialite seems to be an extinct species."