San Antonio College Library

From Thomas Jefferson's Monticello to Michelle Obama's White House organic garden, the image of America as a nation of farmers has persisted from the beginnings of the American experiment. In this rich and evocative collection of agrarian writing from the past two centuries, writers from Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur to Wendell Berry reveal not only the great reach and durability of the American agrarian ideal, but also the ways in which society has...

"American farming has driven American life and fed much of the world for three centuries. Often in the words of farmers themselves, here is the story of what grows where and why, of America's primary farming regions east of the Rockies. What was it like "Back then" to be a farmer? What of the plight of the family farm, what of government programs? What shape will American farming take in the next century? This is a fully informed survey of our number-one...

The explosion of recent Civil War history titles has focused incisively on why soldiers fought, how their commanders mobilized their troops, and the war's bigger meaning within the American national and international contexts. Yet not since Paul W. Gates's classic work Agriculture and the Civil War (1965) has any historian asked what soldiers and those on the home front ate; how civilians produced and marketed foodstuffs during a devastating civil...

"Contrary to those who regard the economic transformation of the West as a gradual process spanning centuries, Peter D. McClelland claims the initial transformation of American agriculture was an unmistakable revolution. He asks when a single crucial quetion was first directed persistently, pervasively, and systematically to farming practices: Is there a better way?" "McClelland surveys practices from crop rotation to livestock breeding, with a particular...