Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts: A Library of America Boxed Set

From the eve of the Great Depression to the start of World War II, Lynd Ward (1905–1985) observed the troubled American scene through the double lens of a politically committed storyteller and a visionary graphic artist. His medium—the wordless “novel in woodcuts”—was his alone, and he quickly brought it from bold iconographic infancy to subtle and still unrivalled mastery.

Gods’ Man (1929), the audaciously ambitious work that made Ward’s reputation, is a modern morality play, an allegory o...