Born in the Country

A History of Rural America

David B. Danbom

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781421423364
• Edition: 3
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Agribusiness
• Index: History

The definitive history of life in rural America.

Throughout most of its history, America has been a rural nation, largely made up of farmers. David B. Danbom's Born in the Country was the first—and still is the only—general history of rural America. Ranging from pre-Columbian times to the enormous changes of the twentieth century, the book masterfully integrates agricultural, technological, and economic themes with new questions about the American experience.

Danbom employs the stories of particular farm families to illustrate the experiences of rural people. This substantially revised and updated third edition

• expands and deepens its coverage of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries
• focuses on the changes in agriculture and rural life in the progressive and New Deal eras as well as the massive shifts that have taken place since 1945
• adds new information about African American and Native American agricultural experiences
• discusses the decline of agriculture as a productive enterprise and its impact on farm families and communities
• explores rural culture, gender issues, agriculture, and the environment
• traces the relationship among farmers, agribusiness, and consumers

In a new and provocative concluding chapter, Danbom reflects on increasing consumer disenchantment with and resistance to modern agriculture as well as the transformation of rural America into a place where farmers are a shrinking minority. Ultimately, he asks whether a distinctive style of rural life exists any longer.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the Third Edition
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• 1. Rural Europe and Pre-Columbian America
• 2. The Rural Development of English North America
• 3. Maturity and Its Discontents
• 4. Agriculture and Economic Growth in the Young Republic
• 5. Rural Life in the Young Nation
• 6. The Unmaking and Remaking of the Rural South
• 7. Rural America in the Age of Industrialization
• 8. Prosperity and Its Discontents
• 9. From the Best of Times to the Worst
• 10. The New Deal and Rural America
• 11. The Production Revolution and the New Agriculture
• 12. Agriculture and Rural Life in the Twenty-First Century
• Notes
• Suggestions for Further Reading
• Index