Larding the Lean Earth

"Stoll possesses a comprehensive understanding of practice and idea, and he travels effortlessly between explanations of the fundamentals of soil science, fertility, tillage, and erosion and examinations of the large historical forces of the nineteenth century, guiding the reader through the depression of 1818, the Mexican War, the pressures of agriculture in a growing market economy, the introduction of marl and guano into agricultural practice, the ecology of grasses, and the brute work required by a pre-industrial farm."—Jane Brox, The American Scholar

"Larding the Lean Earth demonstrates brilliantly that topsoil and subsoil are indeed the very ground in which agriculture and other culture take root."—John Stilgoe, Harvard University

"In this marriage of agricultural and environmental history, Steven Stoll provides a fresh look at the ideology of agricultural improvement during a crucial period of our nation's development. Stoll tells an eloquent story of lost possibilities that still haunt us today."—Hal S. Barron, Harvey Mudd College and Claremont Graduate University

"Steven Stoll's brilliantly original Larding the Lean Earth unearths hidden layers of meaning behind American antebellum farm practices and the westward movement. This thoughtful and far-reaching work traces the origins of today's ecological crisis to the failure of the antebellum ethic of 'improving the soil.' Evocative and provocative, written with verve and passion and with new insights on every page, this is a book that every nineteenth-century historian will want to read."—Daniel Feller, University of New Mexico

"Nineteenth-century Americans were overwhelmingly rural, agrarian, and westwardly mobile. No wonder, then, that ordinary folks and the profoundest minds were preoccupied with dirt—with the quality, conservation, and abandonment of soils—for civilization was, after all, founded upon thriving, stable agriculture. Now we have at last a thorough and imaginative history of American soil that is scientifically and agronomically astute, politically contextualized, and often poetic of expression."—Jack Temple Kirby, Miami University

"Mr. Stoll, a Yale professor and agricultural historian, argues that much of America's early 19th-century transience was the result of poor farming practices that led to soil erosion and deforestation . . . [He] is most interesting when draws out the political implications of restorative agriculture."—Bill Kauffman, The Wall Street Journal

"A well-written, fascinating historical view of developing American agriculture that explores the relationship of farmers, soils, political thought, and social attitudes."—S. G. Shetron, Choice

"With great felicity of language and a firm grasp of forces biological and social, Stoll explicates the methods and ethic of 'improvement' as practiced by an enlightened coterie of highly successful northern farmers, then contrasts their ecologically wise approach (manure was a key factor) to the brutal and unsustainable operations of southern planters. Grounded in rarely referenced farming literature, farmers' and planters' diaries, and political records, Stoll's eye-opening and rousing chronicle of American agriculture and its industrialization explores an overlooked yet crucial facet of our past, and points the way to a more bountiful future."—Donna Seaman, Booklist

"An engaging examination of the early proponents of restorative husbandry—their origins, motivations, and how their ideas played out—from Yale historian Stoll . . . Stoll provides examples in Pennsylvania farms and South Carolina plantations, and he also looks at the moment when conservation began to turn as much on ethics as economics. An inviting and edifying introduction to the improvers, who 'offered an opposite kind of change from the blaze and shift of nineteenth-century America.'"—Kirkus Reviews