[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".

[3] A review in The Elementary School Journal described the book as "thorough and comprehensive throughout...no aspect of community life has been left neglected".

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.