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Article: American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century: How It Flourished and What It Cost.(Book review)
- Article from:
- The Historian
- Article date:
- September 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century: How It Flourished and What It Cost. By Bruce L. Gardner. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. Pp. xii, 388. $27.95.)
The twentieth century witnessed profound change in the nature of what Thomas Jefferson and others considered to be America's fundamental enterprise. It is an industry that continues early in the twenty-first century to elicit feelings of nostalgia, especially when the appeal is to the "family farm." Thus agriculture attracts more public attention and resources than would seem warranted by the numbers--the total number of American farms declined from 6.5 million in 1920 to just over two ...