This Land Was Made For You and Me:
The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie
by Elizabeth Partridge

Elizabeth Partridge grew up in a large, eccentric family in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Her grandmother was photographer Imogen Cunningham, and her Godmother was Dorothea Lange. In 1974, she graduated from UC Berkeley.  A year later she went to Great Britain to study Chinese medicine, earning a Licentiate of Acupuncture in 1978 and returning to the Bay Area to practice acupuncture and herbal medicine.  Her first book, Dorothea Lange: A Visual Life, was published in 1993 with Smithsonian.  She now writes primarily for children.  Elizabeth lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two teenage sons, practicing Chinese medicine and writing books.

"This Land Was Made For You & Me" is the first full biography on Woody Guthrie in twenty years, and it is the first time a biography has been written using the resources contained in the Archives. Pete Seeger calls it, "The best book about Woody ever written," and the critics could not agree more.

It is the 2002 Boston Globe Horn Book Award winner for nonfiction, and it has been selected by the California Council for the Humanities as a companion book for their campaign to get every Californian to read the "Grapes of Wrath" in celebration of John Steinbeck's centennial.

The New York Times Book Review has said that "Partridge... doesn't shy away from details that paint Guthrie in a less-than-saintly light... There's a plain-spoken openness to Woody Guthrie that comes through here." (7/14/02)

This honest account of Woody's life is a must-read for anyone who wants to know more about the man and his music.