Woody Guthrie biographer Joe Klein was told by Alan Lomax, the folklore archivist who collected recordings of Guthrie for the Library of Congress, that he would never really know Guthrie until he understood where he came from. Accordingly, Klein begins his Woody Guthrie: A Life (1980) by providing an immediate sense of place to Guthrie's lineage, portraying him as a drifter, a champion of the homeless and landless, whose ties to the dust bowl were strong enough that he always came home to the territory he both loved and hated. Small, wry, eternally feisty, and unfailingly outspoken, Guthrie came to represent the heart of the dust bowl--its people and their courage. His songs are still recorded and studied as musicians and scholars continue to find within his seemingly simple lyrics an intelligent and radical critique of the country that left many of its citizens by the wayside during the...