In the 1930s and 1940s, the US Department of Agriculture undertook detailed studies of six US rural communities representing various patterns of social and economic change that were affecting rural America. These studies became classics in the literature on rural communities, and for the past half-century have helped to develop major theoretical perspectives in community sociology. Fifty years later the same study areas were revisited by a team of rural sociologists, with the goal of assessing what changes have occurred and what community characteristics have persisted. This book assesses these changes in rural life.