In this Book
- Back to the Land: The Enduring Dream of Self-Sufficiency in Modern America
- Book
- 2011
- Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
summary
For many, “going back to the land” brings to mind the 1960s and 1970s—hippie communes and the Summer of Love, The Whole Earth Catalog and Mother Earth News. More recently, the movement has reemerged in a new enthusiasm for locally produced food and more sustainable energy paths. But these latest back-to-the-landers are part of a much larger story. Americans have been dreaming of returning to the land ever since they started to leave it. In Back to the Land, Dona Brown explores the history of this recurring impulse. ?
Back-to-the-landers have often been viewed as nostalgic escapists or romantic nature-lovers. But their own words reveal a more complex story. In such projects as Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman Farms, Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Broadacre City,” and Helen and Scott Nearing’s quest for “the good life,” Brown finds that the return to the farm has meant less a going-backwards than a going-forwards, a way to meet the challenges of the modern era. Progressive reformers pushed for homesteading to help impoverished workers get out of unhealthy urban slums. Depression-era back-to-the-landers, wary of the centralizing power of the New Deal, embraced a new “third way” politics of decentralism and regionalism. Later still, the movement merged with environmentalism. To understand Americans’ response to these back-to-the-land ideas, Brown turns to the fan letters of ordinary readers—retired teachers and overworked clerks, recent immigrants and single women. In seeking their rural roots, Brown argues, Americans have striven above all for the independence and self-sufficiency they associate with the agrarian ideal.
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians
Table of Contents
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- Illustrations
- pp. vii-viii
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-x
- Introduction
- pp. 3-17
- Part 1: The First American Back-to-the-Land Movement
- Ch. 1 - The Back-to-the-Land Project
- pp. 21-51
- Ch.2 - Adventures in Contentment
- pp. 52-78
- Ch. 3 - Who Wants a Farm?
- pp. 79-195
- Ch.4 - From Little Lands to Suburban Farms
- pp. 106-138
- Part 2: Returning to Back to the Land
- Ch. 5 - Subsistence Homesteads
- pp. 141-171
- Ch. 6 - “I’ll Take My Stand” (in Vermont)
- pp. 172-201
- Ch. 7 - Back to the Garden
- pp. 202-226
Additional Information
ISBN
9780299250737
Related ISBN(s)
9780299250744
MARC Record
OCLC
741558507
Pages
300
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
2011