The book was based on research undertaken by Terry and Sims under the auspices of the Tennessee Valley Authority during the period 1934–1936.

[1] The book covers the origins, civic and economic activities, health and welfare, and religious, recreational, and educational lives of the people of a rural Alabama community that the authors called "Upland Bend".

A review in The High School Journal described it as a "socially valuable document" and stated that "you can feel the pulse of their [i.e., the people of Gorgas] lives after reading this report".

Writing in 2004, Professor Wayne Flynt of Auburn University described the book as "a revealing snapshot of rural Alabama during the 1930s".

[7] Writing the foreword to the 1993 re-print, Clarence L. Mohr compared the book to the seminal depression-era sociological work Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.