American Agriculture

Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century.

When Rudolf Steiner gave these lectures 80 years ago, industrial farming was on the rise and organic methods were being replaced in the name of science, efficiency, and technology. With the widespread alarm over the quality of food in recent years, and the growth of the organic movement and its mainstream acceptance, perceptions are changing. The qualitative aspect of food is once again on the agenda, and in this context Rudolf Steiner's only course of lectures on agriculture is critical to the current debate.

The second book in the treasured Little House series, Farmer Boy is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved story of how her husband, Almanzo, grew up as a farmer boy far from the little house where Laura lived. The nine Little House books have been cherished by generations of readers as both a unique...

In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan’s National Book Award–winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows. The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since...

Taking on this story of heart and hardship, award-winning journalist Brian Reisinger weaves forgotten eras of American history with his own family’s four-generation fight for survival in Midwestern farm country. Listeners learn the truth about America’s most detrimental and unexplained socioeconomic crisis: How the family farms that feed us went from cutting a middle-class path through the Great Depression to barely making ends meet in modern America.

None of us are exempt from the difficulties that life can sometimes bring. Unforeseen and unfavorable circumstances can change our realities so significantly that our entire being is fundamentally changed forever.

Named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and The Times-Picayune The fascinating untold tale of Samuel Zemurray, the self-made banana mogul who went from penniless roadside banana peddler to kingmaker and capitalist revolutionary When Samuel Zemurray arrived in America in 1891...

From the author of 1491—the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas—a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two...

"Vaclav Smil is my favorite author."—Bill Gates An indispensable analysis of how the world really produces and consumes its food—and a scientist's exploration of how we can successfully feed a growing population without killing the planet We have never had to feed as many people as we do...

A vivid portrait of the American prairie, which rivals the rainforest in its biological diversity and, with little notice, is disappearing even faster “This book describes—in loving, living prose—one of the world’s greatest and most important landscapes. And it does so while there’s...

A New York Times Notable Book The inspiration for PBS's AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film The Poison Squad. From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story of how food was made safe in the United States and the heroes, led by the inimitable Dr...

A history of a quintessentially American place--the rural and small town heartland--that uncovers deep yet hidden currents of connection with the world. When Kristin L. Hoganson arrived in Champaign, Illinois, after teaching at Harvard, studying at Yale, and living in the D.C. metro area with...

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice “Extremely wide-ranging and well researched . . . In a tradition of protest literature rooted more in William Blake than in Marx.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker The epic story of how coffee connected and divided the modern world Coffee...

Filled with catchall research, American Hemp examines what this new domestic crop can be used for, what makes it a superior product, and what made it illegal in the first place; the book also delves into the many health and medical benefits of the plant. Hobbs weighs in on how hemp can improve existing industries, from farming to energy to 3D printing, plus how it can make a serious impact on climate change by removing toxins from the soil and by decreasing our dependence on plastics and fossil fuels.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A profound meditation on nature, heritage, and belonging, from an accomplished journalist who left New York City for life on a working farm “I needed this book. I think you need it, too.”—Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place...

BOND VS BLOFELD In the aftermath of Operation Thunderball, Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s trail has gone cold―and so has 007’s love for his job. The only thing that can rekindle his passion is Contessa Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo, a troubled young woman who shares his taste for fast cars and...

A lost gem of twentieth-century literature, Josephine Johnson’s 1934 Pulitzer Prize–winning “exquisite…heartbreakingly real” (The New York Times Book Review) novel follows a year in the life of a family struggling to survive the Dust Bowl. Published when Josephine Johnson was only...

More than a decade after Michael Pollan's game-changing The Omnivore's Dilemma transformed the conversation about what we eat, a combination of global diet trends and corporate interests have put American agriculture into a state of 'quiet emergency', from dangerous drought in California - which grows more than 50 percent of the fruits and vegetables we eat - to catastrophic topsoil loss in the 'breadbasket' heartland of the United States.

A Sweeping HIstory of the Great State of Nebraska From the vast buffalo herds of the Great Plains to the cutting-edge wind farms of today, Nebraska's story is one of remarkable adaptation and quiet triumph. In The Tree Planters' State, readers discover how this seemingly humble prairie state has repeatedly reinvented itself while maintaining the values that make it distinctive. This engaging history traces Nebraska's journey from Native American homeland through territorial struggles over slavery, the dramatic arrival of the transcontinental railroad, and waves of international immigration ...

The family farm lies at the heart of our national identity, and yet its future is in peril. Rick Hammond grew up on a farm, and for 40 years he has raised cattle and crops on his wife's fifth-generation homestead in Nebraska, in hopes of passing it on to their four children. But as the handoff nears, their small family farm - and their entire way of life - are under siege.