From today’s Writer’s Almanac on the occasion of James Agee’s birthday–   In an article that later became, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men*” Agee wrote: “A human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only, having much more in common with the bedbug, the tapeworm, the cancer, and the scavengers of the deep sea.”

• With photos by Walker Evans