Fields Without Dreams : Defending the Agrarian Ideal
Focusing on the personal experiences of a California fruit farmer and the struggles of his neighbors in the San Joaquin Valley, a celebration of the agrarian lifestyle contrasts the corrupt values of urban America with the agrarian virtues that made America great. In one of the most unusual books ever written on farming, Victor Davis Hanson draws on his experience as a farmer and a classicist to eloquently convey the reality of the family farm in modern-day America. Eulogizing the lifestyle vanishing before his eyes, Hanson calls for America to take notice of its lost simplicity and purity before it is too late.
“Victor Davis Hanson is a writer as much as a farmer. His memoir is complex – passionate, honest, angry, scorching….The book deserves a wide audience.”
–Jane Smiley, The New Yorker
“Victor Hanson understands the intimac that should exist between men and land….It is not only humanity that needs his words; the planet does.”
–James Dickey
“Atute, often bitterly funny.”
–John Hildebrand, The New York Times Book Review