The Ghost of Tom Joad guitar work and the lyrics on many of the tracks are a somber reflection of life in the mid-1990s in America and Mexico. The character of Tom Joad entered the American consciousness in John Steinbeck’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Grapes of Wrath", set against the economic hardships of the Great Depression. This spawned a film version starring Henry Fonda, which in turn inspired folk singer Woody Guthrie to pen "The Ballad of Tom Joad". The album's release was followed by Springsteen's solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, which ran from 1995 to 1997 and consisted of mostly small
The Woman Who Was Poor have led Jacques Maritain back to Mother Church will baffle most admirers of that subtle, first-class mind. "Kirkus Reviews" wrote that the novel does not "move with swift and arresting action", but has "passages of great beauty and the character delineation [is] interesting". The critic wrote that the book "is saturated with Catholic thought and allusions, but is by nomeans just a pietistic tract in novel form, for Leon Bloy was an accomplished novelist." The Woman Who Was Poor The Woman Who Was Poor () is an 1897 novel by the French writer Léon Bloy. It follows a woman, Clotilde,