Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America - Paperback

by Steven Stoll (Author)

A Major History of Early Americans' Ideas about Conservation

Fifty years after the Revolution, American farmers faced a crisis: the failing soils of the Atlantic states threatened the agricultural prosperity upon which the republic was founded. Larding the Lean Earth explores the tempestuous debates that erupted between improvers, intent on sustaining the soil of existing farms, and emigrants, who thought it wiser and more American to move westward as the soil gave out. Larding the Lean Earth is a signal work of environmental history and an original contribution to the study of antebellum America.

Author Biography

Steven Stoll, an associate professor of history and environmental studies at Yale University, is the author of The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.