Amazon.com Review
Victor Davis Hanson, a California professor of classical history and a sixth-generation orchard-keeper, revisits an old tradition in American letters, writing social criticism from an agrarian point of view that takes the farmer to be the foundation of any democracy worthy of the name. That Jeffersonian argument is not widely aired these days, apart from the essays of Wendell Berry and a few like-minded nature writers, and it takes on a specifically political force in Hanson's thoughtful, sometimes angry meditations on the decline of farming and the virtuous values that farming once instilled. The enemies of farming are many, Hanson declares. They number not only drought, insects, fire, and fungi, but also political leaders who are content to watch the fertile countryside be carved into arid seas of look-alike homes, housing consumers who demand factory-issued foods in all seasons. Their demands are met--and, barring disaster, will continue to be met--by corporate agriculture, which, Hanson holds, values appearance over taste and prizes short-term profits over the long-term health of the land. The ascendance of that corporate system of food production means that fewer and fewer small farms can survive, and that agriculture will seem an ever more alien enterprise to the coming generations, conducted far off in the hinterland, "the corporate void where no sane man wishes to live."
This all means, Hanson suggests, that the farmer of old who knew how to fix tractors and fences, how to wage war on predators while shunning the use of poisons, and how to live self-reliantly is a thing of the past. The disappearance of that American archetype is all to the bad. As Hanson writes, "We have lost our agrarian landscape and with it the insurance that there would be an autonomous, outspoken, and critical group of citizens eager to remind us of the current fads and follies of the day." Resounding with righteous fury and good common sense, his book is a call to turn back the clock and set a more civilized table. --Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly
What does the imminent death of the family farm mean to the average American? A great deal, declares Hanson, who as both a farmer and a classics professor (California State University-Fresno) imbues this provocative, eloquent polemic with personal experience plus an unshakeable agrarian vision that harks back to Greece, Rome and the early American republic. Agribusiness, says Hanson, has obliterated the rural culture that once was the matrix of American society. The superabundance bestowed by corporate mega-farms, he adds, comes at a price: factory farms, propped up by mostly hidden government support and dependent on toxic pesticides and fertilizers, pollute the air, water and soil as they turn out bland, tasteless produce for a voracious, rootless and soulless consumerist society. Hanson (Fields Without Dreams) is totally unsentimental about small-scale independent farming; far from being tranquil, bucolic and simple, he reports, it is a brutal, dirty, maddening, messy, always difficult, sometimes deadly pursuit. Yet family farming, he insists, cultivates bedrock values--reliance on self and family, distrust of complexity and bureaucracy, skepticism of taxation, willingness to stand up to evil (whether the enemy be insects, weeds or monopolistic landowners)--values that are integral to a resilient, egalitarian democracy but that he believes are now in short supply. Hanson models these impassioned essays on Cr?vecoeur's 1782 classic Letters from an American Farmer and sprinkles his barbed critique of contemporary American culture with allusions to Virgil, Pericles, Pindar, Euripides and Thucydides. Even if readers don't plan to go back to nature, his feisty, curmudgeonly, challenging, ruminative essays provide much food for thought. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
When St. John de Crevecoeur wrote his Letters from an American Farmer 200 years ago, he described the emergence of a new type of citizen, the independent small farmer who embodied the ideal balance of wildness and culture, intellect and experience. According to Hanson, a fifth-generation grape farmer and classics professor, this type of individual has been the foundation of American democracy. However, as a result of the yeoman's displacement by corporate agribusiness and suburban sprawl, the moral fabric of America is unraveling, and "no intellectual has stepped forward to craft a higher culture for the people beyond materialism and consumerism." In this superbly quotable book, Hanson shows us a way of life that is irrevocably disappearing. Though the farmer must contend with an endless array of difficulties and obstacles, his resourceful and determined efforts to bring order to this chaos shape his unique character. The passing of this agrarian life has meant the passing of "ethical restraint on the economy." Like Wendell Berry, Hanson writes eloquently about the intrinsic worth of a lifestyle that values family and community, but unlike Berry he focuses more on the constant and multifarious problems and obstacles which the small farmer faces day to day. Written with passion and honesty, this informative work is highly recommended for academic and public libraries.
-Ilse Heidmann, San Marcos, TX
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Victor Davis Hanson is Professor of Classics at California State University's Fresno campus.
