Treasury of American Folklore: Stories, Ballads, and Traditions of the People

Named by the Library of Congress in a 2012 exhibit as among the top “100 Books that Shaped America,” this two-volume set contains 500 stories and 100 songs collected from the author’s time as national folklore editor for the Federal Writer’s Project (1938-39) as well as his work as archivist of folksongs at the Library of Congress. As Carl Sandburg writes in his foreword, “So here we have nothing less than an encyclopedia of the folklore of America. An encyclopedia is where you get up into ...