The PMP Exam: How to Pass On Your First Try (Test Prep series)

Book Description

This self-study guide for the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification exam from the Project Management Institute contains everything project managers need to pass the PMP Exam, including 44 processes, and 592 inputs, tools, and outputs. Exam topics are covered and insider secrets, complete explanations of all PMP subjects, test tricks and tips, hundreds of highly realistic sample questions, and exercises designed to strengthen understanding of PMP concepts and prepare managers for exam success on the first attempt are provided.

Customer Reviews:

Disappointed.......2007-10-07

I've read this and many other PMP study guides and here is my opinion. I passed the PMP exam but NOT due to this book. The main disappointment I have with this book (and a few others) is that it is organized according to the knowledge areas, whereas the PMP exam specifications by PMI are organized according to the process groups. Also it makes more sense to study project management by process groups because this approach is closer to the real life experience: initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing. If I need to look at the project management body of knowledge organized according to the knowledge areas, I would rather look at the PMBOK Guide. The exam study guides should follow the exam specifications, and should not be a mere re-run of the PMBOK Guide. Also, there is no mention of the exam objectives in any chapter. It reads like more or less a re-run of the PMBOK Guide without any consideration of the exam spec. Other drawbacks of the book are the following:
1.Questions are too easy and not close to the real exam questions
2.For most of the topics the coverage is at very much surface leve, no depth. The adequate explanations and depth are missing.
3.Lots of typos and errors
So, don't use it as a primary source for your preparation. It's ok as a secondary source.

Passed easily!.......2007-09-14

Not sure whether this book was the reason for me passing or the PM PowerTrac CBT tool by Management Concepts (the company I work for has multiple licenses for this). I didn't really do much of the sample questions, I left that to PowerTrac; the content is pretty good though and is readable. I think the key to passing is to understand the structure of the questions and do a few example exams. All in all, my preparation for the exam was about a month, and I wasn't very disciplined either!

If I had used this book first time I would have passed at frst try........2007-09-05

Yes I passed the exam at second attempt. One reason the exam has gotten tough do not expect the question to be as easy as those that are in exercise or simulation exam. For every question you really need to know the fundamentals(as per PMI principles!!). That leads to my second reason for failing, I used much popular Rita Mulacahy's PMP exam prep book. The real problem started when I used the even more expensive PMP fast Track by RMC, each simulation test question answer confused me further. I took the PMP exam and I answered most obvious question with wrong answer. My friend suggested me to forget all other material and focus on this book. This book clearly explains the fundamental behind each knowledge area followed by Input - tools & technique - output of process within this knowledge area. If you understand and remember these gudelines thoroughly you are ready for the exam. If you are lucky and get many math questions you can score up to 70% easily. One more book which helped me was Paul Sanghera's PMP in depth, if you are an IT professional then you may find reading paul's book quiet enjoyable. Good luck.

PMP Reference.......2007-08-26

A great resource for explaining why the answers chosen in their sample exercises are correct or incorrect. This book help to solidify the readers understanding of the PMBOK.

Great book to pass the exam.......2007-08-17

I took PMP earlier this week and pass on the first try. This is a great book, easy to understand but it has its own drawbacks. My exam was really tough. I hardly had any math questions and all the exam questions were really lengthy with lengthy answers unlike the practice questions that appear as excercise and final exam. It was like mini reading comprehension on each question. So expect to see much harder questions that what is in the book. Good thing is that with PM experience and reading this book from begin to end, it will not be a problem to pass eventhough there will be many questions outside of this book. I don't know if the exam is getting tougher day by day or it was just my luck to see those kinds of questions.

Accompanying course workbook for "The PMP Exam: How to Pass On Your First Try", used with 3-day class (Exam Prep Series)

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Accompanying course workbook for "The PMP Exam: How to Pass On Your First Try", used with 3-day class (Exam Prep Series)
Andy Crowe
Manufacturer: Velociteach
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Product Description

Memory maps, sample test, scoreing sheets for master text tests, etc.

Book Description

The best evidence to date to guide the nation as to what employment and training strategies work and don't work for what groups. This book reports and interprets the findings of the largest and most rigorous evaluation ever done of employment and training programs designed to increase the employment and earnings, and reduce the dependence, of America's disadvantaged. The study of the Job Training Partnership Act programs included 16 sites across the country; a sample of over 20,000 individuals; a random- assignment experimental design; a two-year analysis period; data from specially designed surveys; and a wide range of state and local administrative records. This book measures effectiveness separately for adult men, adult women, female youth, and male youth. It finds modest successes for the first three groups but confirms the sad truth that we have yet to find a generalizable strategy that increases the labor market chances of disadvantaged young men.

Customer Reviews:

A Solid Study: Best of Breed.......2003-07-28

The publisher's description is very accurate. This is the best study ever conducted on the impact of job training for the disadvantaged. Basically, study finds very modest successes for certain groups of adults, women in particular, but does not show general success. To put it mildly, most government job training programs are abysmal failures, hiding behind meaningless statistics (with no control groups for comparison, and methods of data collection that overstate success). This study actually provides a randomly assigned control group for comparison!

By now, 2003, the study is quite dated. JTPA is a dead program, but its successor is still living. Despite the hype, the Workforce Investment Act is not much different in terms of the actual services being delivered (and by many of the same providers or individuals). The main difference between then and now is the process for participant selection, some degree of integration and/or co-location of services, and the methods of paying for support services. Unfortunately, for mainly political reasons, the WIA program will probably not be subjected to the same level of rigorous scrutiny as found in this book. This study is an outstanding example of how a program evaluation should be done. For that reason alone, it should be standard reading for practioners in workforce development and in program evaluation.

As the performance analyst assigned to the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) at the Legislative Budget Board in Austin, I found this book to be a superb reference and guide to the program and its performance. When I became TWC's first director of planning, I ordered it for the agency library. It is a tragedy that few practitioners have read it, much less addressed its findings.

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Job Training Policy In The United States

Manufacturer: W. E. Upjohn Institute
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Job Hunting & Careers | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Guides | Job Hunting & Careers | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Job Hunting | Job Hunting & Careers | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Training | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0880993065

Book Description

This book provides a broad overview of federally funded job training programs as they exist today. The notable list of contributors review what training consists of and how training programs are implemented under WIA. In particular, they examine training service providers and methods of delivering training services, including the use of individual training accounts and eligible training provider lists. Performance management under WIA is examined, as well as the effectiveness of training programs. In addition, public training programs are compared to private training provided in the United States and to public training programs offered in other industrial nations.

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David vs. Goliath
This is an outstanding book
Perfect analysis of why people hire workers

The Job Training Charade
Gordon Lafer
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Labor Policy | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Workplace | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Economic Conditions | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Economic Policy & Development | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Labor & Industrial Relations | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Public Policy | Government | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Labor & Industrial Relations | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Political Parties | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Business & Investing | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0801439647

Book Description

Job training has long been promoted as a central policy response to poverty and unemployment. Both Democrats and Republicans have trumpeted training as the answer to everything from welfare to NAFTA. The Job Training Charade provides a comprehensive critique showing that training has been a near-total failure. Even more dramatically, the book shows how politicians have ignored repeated reports of the program's failure, and have kept funding a policy they know cannot work.

Gordon Lafer first examines the economic assumptions and track record of training policy. He goes on to provide a political analysis of why job training has remained so popular despite widespread evidence of its economic failure. The author concludes that job training functions less as an economic prescription aimed at solving poverty than as a political strategy aimed at managing the popular response to economic distress.

The Job Training Charade is a landmark book showing how a bipartisan consensus may coalesce behind a phantom policy that serves political needs while ignoring economic realities.

Customer Reviews:

David vs. Goliath.......2004-02-14

Gordon Lafer shows us clearly the etiology of the federally-funded job training programs such as JTPA and today WIA. He shows us clearly why these programs are political responses and not actually based in "the truth" of unemployment at all. There are too few jobs available to help poor people with a band-aid approach. Although he does not come out and say it, Lafer's implication is that the CETA program, public funding of jobs, was more to the point for poor people. The government then acts as the employer of last resort. He probably feels, and I agree, that it will come to that again soon, because corporate America is out to make a profit, not help the workers, and unions? Well, they're shrinking and losing even the little say-so they did have, witness the grocery strike right now in Southern California. So, eventually, probably sooner than later, there will be many idle people lingering and you know what the devil does with idle lingering people. The only redeeming element of politics that we can find in Lafer's scathing analysis of Ronald Reagan and his ilk, is that what goes around comes around. Politics goes in cycles. CETA had its day, just as the New Deal did, and the War on Poverty. Now we're in the thick of a backlash period, but it can't last. That is, if it does last, it won't be the same old U.S. anymore, will it? More like Unbrave New World? Diximus.

This is an outstanding book.......2003-09-17

Lafer's analysis is first rate. All the numbers are there, but what makes this book exceptional is the clear and accessible writing Lafer uses to present the material. Anyone who wants to know the politics and the economics behind job training efforts in the United States will LOVE this book. For anyone interested in the ever growing influence of corporate America into matters of national economic and educational policy, Lafer's _The Job Training Charade_ is essential reading.

Perfect analysis of why people hire workers.......2003-05-02

You need to read this book.
It shows clearly the motivations employers
use to make hiring decisions.

Dr. Lafer shows the true reasons hire/not hire
decisions are made.
It fits perfectly with an economic model: cost.
He shows, through government statistics and interviews
with employers, the true motivations for hiring.
It's all about cost (obviously).
But i'm not summarizing! The book gives a much
better description of this huge trend, affecting
each of our lives.
It starts out with an analysis of the job training
program for lesser educated persons. The chapter
that affects me, the 2nd one, "Does education really matter"
is 20+ pages of information (not opinion) of why
people hire. It's so easy to say "there is a skills mismatch".
Yet, i've seen organized people rise to prominent positions
based solely on their abilities to listen to their boss, and be
organized. Learning more and more from universities won't
save you.
You need to understand what the reasons are.

The writing style is very clear. You're not confused
with arcane economic jargon. The facts are laid out,
and the supporting details are put in footnotes.

Book Description

Explore the evolution, development, and applications of accreditation standards for employee assistance programs!

Accreditation ensures private or public sector organizations that an employee assistance program (EAP) has an acceptable level of experience, advisement, and expertise. Accreditation of Employee Assistance Programs examines all facets of EAP accreditation while revealing the council on accreditation (COA) standards. Thorough and focused chapters discuss the value of EAP accreditation to future customers, the development of accreditation standards for employee assistance programs, and the smoothest road to travel to your destination of EAP accreditation.

Accreditation of Employee Assistance Programs describes in depth the evolution, development, and applications of accreditation standards for EAPs. Respected authorities discuss the history and outlook of accreditation while providing valuable information on the entire process. Illustrative case studies provide further valuable insight.

Accreditation of Employee Assistance Programs explores:

the history of accreditation of EAPs in the United States and Canada

EAP core technology

the best strategies for developing standards for accreditation

the COAs employee accreditation process

in-depth accreditation case studies

the future of credentialing and accreditation in EAPs

Thorough and informative, Accreditation of Employee Assistance Programs is of interest to those in employee assistance professions, benefits consultants, human resource managers, and students in the EAP field.

$Evaluation of Job Changes within the Refractory Ceramic Fiber Industry and How They Effect an Employee's Occupational Exposures$
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Evaluation of Job Changes within the Refractory Ceramic Fiber Industry and How They Effect an Employee's Occupational Exposures

Manufacturer: Storming Media
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Spiral-bound

Military Engineering | Special Topics | Engineering | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1423561341

Product Description

This is a AIR FORCE INST OF TECH WRIGHT-PATTERSONAFB OH report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A538543. The abstract provided by the Pentagon follows: Knowing the comprehensive history of a job or an employee's occupational exposure is important for determining worker exposures. Changes associated with jobs or job tasks can impact these exposures significantly. Often job descriptions are too general or are inadequate for determining a worker's true occupational exposure history. Collection of detailed task information may be helpful for categorizing worker exposures. This study used data collected annually by personal interview with individual employees between the years of 1988 and 1993 at three separate Refractory Ceramic Fiber (ROF) plants. Initially, over 350 Current Employee Questionnaire (CEO) interviews were evaluated and compiled on a computerized spreadsheet. Tasks were listed for each job title, year, and frequency reported from the interviews and cross-referenced to individual workers. To reduce inter-individual variability, only those interviews for which an individual worker was questioned for two or more years and did not change job titles were used. This reduced the number of CEO interviews to 69.

Measures of Job Satisfaction, Organisational Commitment, Mental Health and Job Related Well-being: A Benchmarking Manual

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Measures of Job Satisfaction, Organisational Commitment, Mental Health and Job Related Well-being: A Benchmarking Manual
Chris Stride , Toby D. Wall , and Nick Catley
Manufacturer: Wiley-Interscience
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Occupational & Organizational | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0470059818

Book Description

The first edition of this manual was published by the Institute of Work Psychology in 1999. It presented three widely used measurement scales of Job Satisfaction, Mental Health and Job-related Well-being, along with benchmarking data for comparison. For this second edition, there is an additional chapter detailing a widely used measure of Organizational Commitment, and an expanded introduction to the book presenting a rationale for the work and explaining how it can help researchers and professionals.

The benchmarking data is based on a sample of almost 60,000 respondents from 115 different organizations across a wide spectrum of industries and occupations. Information is given by occupational group, and is further broken down by age and gender.

Each of the chapters is devoted to a reliable and widely used measurement scale of employee well-being, comprising of a description of the scale and brief development history, followed by the supporting benchmarking data.

Book Description

One of the most difficult questions facing human resource managers in both the public and private sectors is how to determine the relative worth of different types of jobs and to set compensation accordingly. A recent innovation developed at the Bell System and field-tested by Northwestern Bell offers the most comprehensive and practical approach to this problem yet devised. Occupational Job Evaluation (OJE) reduces job content to a numerical scale that provides a common denominator for evaluating diverse positions. Written by a human resources specialist who was directly involved in the development and testing of OJE, this book offers a complete analysis of the system together with data on its application and potential uses outside the telecommunications industry.

Customer Reviews:

Guide book for technically trained Manager.......2002-09-14

This book is about a job evaluation plan that provides research-based answers to the foregoing questions. questions pertaining to the relative worth of jobs are faced by organization in both the public and private sectors.
It's mention how to development of the technology for quantifing the worth of jobs.

Wisconsin welfare employment experiments: An evaluation of the WEJT and CWEP programs

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Wisconsin welfare employment experiments: An evaluation of the WEJT and CWEP programs
John Pawasarat
Manufacturer: Employment and Training Institute, Division of Outreach and Continuing Education Extension, University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Education & Training | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006P4M5S

After firing the shots, what happens?(Perspective) : An article from: The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin

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After firing the shots, what happens?(Perspective) : An article from: The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin
Shannon Bohrer
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, published by Thomson Gale on September 1, 2005. The length of the article is 3289 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: After firing the shots, what happens?(Perspective)
Author: Shannon Bohrer
Publication: The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 74 Issue: 9 Page: 8(6)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

The 1930s exodus of "Okies" dispossessed by repeated droughts and failed crop prices was a relatively brief interlude in the history of migrant agricultural labor. Yet it attracted wide attention through the publication of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and the images of Farm Security Administration photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein. Ironically, their work risked sublimating the subjects—real people and actual experience—into aesthetic artifacts, icons of suffering, deprivation, and despair. Working for the Farm Security Administration in California's migrant labor camps in 1938-39, Sanora Babb, a young journalist and short story writer, together with her sister Dorothy, a gifted amateur photographer, entered the intimacy of the dispossessed farmers' lives as insiders, evidenced in the immediacy and accuracy of their writings and photos. Born in Oklahoma and raised on a dryland farm, the Babb sisters had unparalleled access to the day-by-day harsh reality of field labor and family life.

This book presents a vivid, firsthand account of the Dust Bowl refugees, the migrant labor camps, and the growth of labor activism among Anglo and Mexican farm workers in California's agricultural valleys linked by the "Dirty Plate Trail" (Highway 99). It draws upon the detailed field notes that Sanora Babb wrote while in the camps, as well as on published articles and short stories about the migrant workers and an excerpt from her Dust Bowl novel, Whose Names Are Unknown. Like Sanora's writing, Dorothy's photos reveal an unmediated, personal encounter with the migrants, portraying the social and emotional realities of their actual living and working conditions, together with their efforts to organize and to seek temporary recreation. An authority in working-class literature and history, volume editor Douglas Wixson places the Babb sisters' work in relevant historical and social-political contexts, examining their role in reconfiguring the Dust Bowl exodus as a site of memory in the national consciousness.

Focusing on the material conditions of everyday existence among the Dust Bowl refugees, the words and images of these two perceptive young women clearly show that, contrary to stereotype, the "Okies" were a widely diverse people, including not only Steinbeck's sharecropper "Joads" but also literate, independent farmers who, in the democracy of the FSA camps, found effective ways to rebuild lives and create communities.

Customer Reviews:

The Great Migration to California in 1930s.......2007-06-22

For fifty-eight days in the summer of 1934, temperatures in the High Plains exceeded 100 degrees, with almost no rain. In the Texas Panhandle near Dalhart, as well as in other High Plains states, a black blizzard of dust turned day into night. The wind raged endlessly, blowing the Texas top soil into Oklahoma, where it mixed with the red Oklahoma soil, and blew into Arkansas and Kansas and Colorado. It destroyed car engines, choked cattle to death, buried houses under mountains of sand. People got sick with respiratory illnesses, "dust pneumonia" they called it. Traffic stopped. Schools and businesses closed. Ruined farms were abandoned.

Those that made it through 1934, did not survive in 1936 when the dust storms returned, this time accompanied by a plague of grasshoppers that devoured their dryland crops. It was the middle of the Great Depression, and those people already living on the edge fell off the precipice.

"On the Dirty Plate Trail" is about the Great Migration that ensued as a result of the Dust Bowl. The title refers to Highway 99, which took the refugees from peas in California's Imperial Valley to cotton in the San Joaquin Valley to peaches and prunes in the Sacramento Valley as farmers without farms suddenly became migrant workers. They were called Okies no matter which state they hailed from, and they were exploited by labor contractors, abused by locals, and blamed by society for their own troubles. They lived in squatters camps, or shacks rented to them by the farm bosses, or if they were lucky, in tent cities provided by the Farm Security Administration. Conditions were often deplorable, and many died of disease, in childbirth or by accident.

In 1929, the Babb sisters, Sanora and Dorothy, had come to California from Kansas. It was because of their farmer's daughters background that they were accepted as insiders by the refugees. While visiting the camps, Sanora made "field notes" intended for use in the Dust Bowl novel she was writing, and Dorothy snapped pictures with her camera.

Years later, Dorothy's well-documented photographs were found in a brown paper sack and given by relatives to Douglas Wixson, who matched the photographs with Sanora's field notes to create this stunning volume. The photographs alone are worth the price. These candid images unveil the migrant story of hunger and misery, laughter and music, mud and squalor, pride and picket lines.

"Migration is as old as humankind and as recent as today," says Douglas Wixson, noting in his Preface that as he finished the final draft of this book, refugees from Hurricane Katrina were pouring from flood-stricken New Orleans and other devastated cities on the Gulf Coast, "like shifting currents of water ... separate, little noticed, yet indispensable to our economy."

Dust Bowl Migrants in the American Imagination (Rural America)

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Dust Bowl Migrants in the American Imagination (Rural America)
Charles J. Shindo
Manufacturer: University Press Of Kansas
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

Emigration & Immigration | Administrative Law | Law | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0700608109

Book Description

More than any other event of the 1930s, the migration of thousands of jobless and dispossessed Americans from the Dust Bowl states to the "promised land" of California evokes the hardships and despair of the Great Depression. In this innovative new study, Charles Shindo shows how the public memory of that migration has been dominated not by academic historians but by a handful of artists and would-be reformers. Shindo examines the images of Dust Bowl migrants in photography, fiction, film, and song and marks off the various distances between these representations and the realities of migrant lives. He shows how photographer Dorothea Lange, novelist John Steinbeck, Hollywood filmmaker John Ford, and folksinger Woody Guthrie, as well as folklorists and government reformers, sympathized with the migrants' plight but also appropriated that experience to further their own aesthetic and ideological agendas. The haunted look of Lange's "Migrant Mother" and other photos, the powerful story of the Joad family in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Ford's poetic cinematic adaptation of that novel, and the gritty plainfolk lyrics of Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads have all combined to portray the migrants as the quintessential victims of the Great Depression. Shindo, however, contends that these artists failed to fully grasp the realities of "Okie" culture and seemed far more concerned with promoting views and agendas that the migrants themselves might have found inaccurate or unappealing. Shindo's study shows us how art can dominate history in the popular mind and illuminates the ways in which artists blend aesthetics and politics to make a personal statement about the human condition. His book not only increases our understanding of a tragic era in American history but also expands the scope of current histories of the American West to include cultural representations and their importance.

The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History

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The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History
R. Douglas Hurt
Manufacturer: Burnham, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Production & Operations | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

History | Agricultural Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0882295411

American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California

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The Last Frontiersmen
A great companion to Grapes of Wrath
American Exodus: Okies in California How They Really Were
Excellent overview

American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California
James N. Gregory
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Theory | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

Emigration & Immigration | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Human Geography | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0195044231

Book Description

Fifty years ago, John Steinbeck's now classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, captured the epic story of an Oklahoma farm family driven west to California by dust storms, drought, and economic hardship. It was a story that generations of Americans have also come to know through Dorothea Lange's
unforgettable photos of migrant families struggling to make a living in Depression-torn California. Now in James N. Gregory's pathbreaking American Exodus, there is at last an historical study that moves beyond the fiction of the 1930s to uncover the full meaning of these events.
American Exodus takes us back to the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and the war boom influx of the 1940s to explore the experiences of the more than one million Oklahomans, Arkansans, Texans, and Missourians who sought opportunities in California. Gregory reaches into the migrants' lives
to reveal not only their economic trials but also their impact on California's culture and society. He traces the development of an "Okie subculture" that over the years has grown into an essential element in California's cultural landscape.
Gregory vividly depicts how Southwesterners brought with them on their journey west an allegiance to evangelical Protestantism, "plain-folk American" values, and a love of country music. These values gave Okies an expanding cultural presence their new home. In their neighborhoods, often
called "Little Oklahomas," they created a community of churches and saloons, of church-goers and good-old-boys, mixing stern-minded religious thinking with hard-drinking irreverence. Today, Baptist and Pentecostal churches abound in this region, and from Gene Autry, "Oklahoma's singing cowboy," to
Woody Guthrie, Bob Wills, and Merle Haggard, the special concerns of Southwesterners have long dominated the country music industry in California. The legacy of the Dust Bowl migration can also be measured in political terms. Throughout California and especially in the San Joaquin Valley Okies have
implanted their own brand of populist conservatism.
The consequences reach far beyond California. The Dust Bowl migration was part of a larger heartland diaspora that has sent millions of Southerners and rural Midwesterners to the nation's northern and western industrial perimeter. American Exodus is the first book to examine the cultural
implications of that massive 20th-century population shift. In this rich account of the experiences and impact of these migrant heartlanders, Gregory fills an important gap in recent American social history.

Customer Reviews:

The Last Frontiersmen.......2003-01-26

Overall a good study of the last great westward folk migration in American history. I would add that many of their predecessors in the "classic" frontier period were just as broke and hungry as these migrants, but there was little mass media around to record them. An interesting, well-done slice of folk Americana.

A great companion to Grapes of Wrath.......2000-11-23

James Gregory has put together a outstanding history of the migration and culture of the dust bowl migrants who settled in California. I have probably read Grapes of Wrath four or five times since first reading it in high school, but after reading Gregory's description of the way these poor south-westerners struggled with poverty and at the same time maintained family unity and cultural pride, Steinbeck's book takes on a whole new meaning. Gregory goes step by step to show what motivated many to move, and then what motivated them to stay even though they suffered great privations and predjudice. I especially enjoyed learning about the influences of country music not just upon the migrants, but on the entire nation. A must read to make Grapes more clear!

American Exodus: Okies in California How They Really Were.......2000-03-22

I thought that this was a good book. I read it for a history course on the Great Depression and it was definately worth reading. It can get a little bogged down in detail or a little dull ocassionally, but overall it is a good view of "okie culture". It really helped be to understand the diversity and impact of the migration. And it contains a few interesting personal stories as well!

Excellent overview.......2000-02-18

This book provides an excellent overview of the history of the dust bowl Okies and the culture they (we) have created in central California. Gregory explores the religion, music, and politics well in clear language. The book is short enough to be enjoyable and while goes into some depth on a few issues, it is not so filled with unimportant details as to be muddled. Gregory sprinkles the text with brief excerpts of the many interviews he conducted with the Okies.

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The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History
R. Douglas Hurt
Manufacturer: Nelson Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000J13YUI

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