An American Exodus records the westward migration of farm families from Oklahoma, Texas, and elsewhere in the Southwest, dispossessed by the Depression and displaced by drought and attempts to industrialise farming. Over three years, under the auspices of the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration, Dorothea Lange and her husband, Paul Schuster Taylor, photographed and talked with migrant labourers in California, drought refugees from the Oklahoma Dustbowl, tenant farmers in Alabama, and others affected by the harsh economic and environmental conditions.

'Both Lange and Taylor were concerned, in their concept of good documentary practice, neither to sensationalise, aestheticise nor patronise. Their determination to be as objective as possible, and more importantly, to carry that objectivity into the presentation of the material, makes An American Exodus arguably the best of the many books dealing with the Depression.' (The Photobook 123).

First edition; 8vo (254 x 192 mm, 10 x 7½ in); black-and-white photographs printed in relief halftone printed by the Cornwall Press, New York, introduction by Dorothea Lange and Paul Schuster Taylor, text by Paul Schuster Taylor, top edge dyed blue; tan printed endpapers, navy cloth-covered boards, titles stamped in gold to spine and upper side, light wear to extremities, pushing to head and foot of spine, second issue dust-jacket with a quote by Voltaire, which replaced an advertisement for other Reynal & Hitchcock books including Mein Kampf, minor offsetting from cloth and spotting on verso, lightly rubbed, light creasing to head of spine, light wear to extremities with two short tears and a tiny chip to rear panel, previous owner's name barely readable on half-title, near-fine; 158, [2]pp.