Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California. By Peter La Chapelle. American Crossroads 22. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. ISBN-13: 978-0-520-24889-2. Softcover. Pp. xiv, 350. $24.95.

The cover of this book is meant to intrigue readers: cover designer Sandy Drooker creates a display of large, centered white letters that read "proud to be an Okie," while in the background (but certainly not to be ignored) is a yellow-tinted, black-and-white photo featuring Woody Guthrie looking right at us while holding his guitar. Just enough is shown for readers to understand the message on Guthrie's guitar: "this machine kills fascists." La Chapelle's study is clearly a labor of love, demonstrated best by the author's thorough research conducted at the University of California and the Santa Monica Public Library (the latter a little-known goldmine of documents about the art and culture in the area), as well as the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives in New York, among other locations. La Chapelle explores the emerging country music culture in Southern California, focusing on Dust bowl migrants and their descendants from the 1930s to the 1970s. Llike Guthrie, La Chapelle challenges images of Okies in L.A.: some felt that they were dropped there from another planet (an attitude prevalent into the 1970s). this attitude informs not only the media portrayal of Okies, but even Pulitzer Prize­winner John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (1939). In addition, writers like Newbery medalist Karen Hesse, in Out of the Dust (1997), continue to dispel the myths of Guthrie's people; however, the false representations of an ignorant, illiterate, down-and-out-of-place, racially inferior group remains, for La Chapelle argues that even country music scholars have assumed that Okie music mirrors an unchanging conservative stance, combined with a false view that this "hillbilly music" was static and failed to be intellectually engaging.