Gathering eggs, planting crops, feeding hogs: firsthand experience of these grows more distant with each new generation. From 1914 to 1964, however, a West Texas farmer named William G. DeLoach quietly recorded this life-style. He described weather, plantings, harvests, births, and deaths in his diary. In doing so, he not only chronicled the life changes that everyone experiences but also kept a record of the developments taking place across the country and around the world.
The diary's editor, Janet Neugebauer, supplies interweaves explanations to round out the picture that DeLoach...