The planter of modern life : Louis Bromfield and the seeds of a food revolution Cover Image

Book

The planter of modern life : Louis Bromfield and the seeds of a food revolution / Stephen Heyman.

Summary:

"How a literary idol of the Lost Generation launched America's organic and sustainable food movement. In interwar France, Louis Bromfield was equally famous as a writer and as a gardener. He pruned dahlias with Edith Wharton, weeded Gertrude Stein's vegetable patch, and fed the starving artists who flocked to his farmhouse outside Paris. His best-selling novels earned him a Pulitzer-and the jealousy of friends like Ernest Hemingway. But his radical approach to the soil has aged better than his books, inspiring a wave of farmers, foodies, and chefs to rethink how they should grow and consume their food. In 1938, Bromfield returned to his native Ohio, an expat novelist now reinvented as the squire of 1,000-acre Malabar Farm. Transplanting ideas from India and Europe, he created a mecca for forward- thinking agriculturalists and a rural retreat for celebrities like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (who were married there in 1945). Bromfield's untold story is a fascinating history of people and places-and of deep-rooted concerns about the environment and its ability to sustain our most basic needs and pleasures"-- Provided by publisher.

Record details

ISBN: 9781324001898
ISBN: 1324001895
Physical Description: 340 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2020]
Copyright: ©2020

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Garden (1918-1938). Foreign soil: Brest, January 1918 ; Invasive species: Paris, winter 1925-26 ; Hothouse: Senlis, 1929 ; "Teched": Saint-Brice-sous-Fôret, 1931 ; Tangled roots: Senlis, 1932 ; Blight: Senlis, summer 1936 ; The rains came: aboard the Victoria -- Farm (1938-1956). Seeding: Richland, county, Ohio, December 1938 ; Germination: Malabar farm, 1939 ; Victory garden: St. Louis, Missouri, 1941 ; Food fight: Malabar farm, 1942 ; Erosion: Malabar farm, 1945 ; Four seasons at Malabar: based on farm journals, 1944-1953 ; On the hill: Washington, DC, May 1951 ; Breeding: Malabar farm, 1952 ; Unto the ground: Duke farms, Hillsborough, New Jersey, 1955 -- Epilogue: the white room: Itatiba, São Paulo State, Brazil, 1954.