| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Keith J. Volanto. Texas, Cotton, and the New Deal. (Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life, number 7.) College Station: Texas A&M University Press. 2005. Pp. xv, 194. $35.00.
Keith J. Volanto's prose is so clear that he could write understandable instructions for programming a VCR. That is good, because such clarity is needed to discuss successfully the New Deal agricultural programs. In this book, Volanto describes the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) programs in one state for one commodity. Within this limited scope, he illustrates very thoroughly the confusion that reigned throughout the New Deal in general and reminds us that the programs of that period were largely attempts to remedy a desperate situation with whatever solution came to hand.	1
Volanto's study is the first to analyze the AAA in a single state. Texas, a large state at the western edge of cotton cultivation, may not be the best for a case study, but one can certainly argue for its importance in raising forty percent of the nation's cotton crop. Just as cotton drove much of the economy of the South, it affected more than seventy percent of the Texas population (p. 12). Relying primarily on the papers of prominent New Deal figures and publications from the U.S. government, the book has a top-down, administrative bent. Volanto analyzes relevant legislation, its implementation, and its impact to tell his story in a rather dispassionate manner. And yet the tale of the AAA in Texas is such that a mere recitation of the facts is enough to elicit groans of despair from the reader.	. . .

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