Treasures.

A biography of a man who had my dream job is out.

Alan Lomax proved that the poorest places held some of the richest cultural treasures.

In his field-collecting, Lomax ignored the standard code of conduct, paying his "informants" or plying them with drink. He won their confidence by strumming a guitar and singing cowboy songs in his Texas drawl—really by any means necessary to get a performance on record, because for Lomax it was a race against time and the encroaching homogenization of modern culture. "An advance might be in order," he complained to his Library of Congress boss in 1938 from the woods of Upper Michigan, where he was recording lumberjacks. "I am not wastreling—but songs in Michigan absolutely require beer."

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Lomax at work, interviewing blues man, Sam Chatmon. Love the beard ...