Overview

Every society expresses its fundamental values and hopes in the ways it shapes and inhabits its landscapes. In this literate and wide-ranging exploration, Eric T. Freyfogle raises difficult questions about American culture while illuminating the intellectual origins of urban sprawl, dwindling wildlife habitats, over-engineered rivers, and degraded forests and grasslands. These land-use crises, he contends, arise mostly because of cultural attitudes that once made sense on the American frontier but now threaten our natural resources. To support and sustain healthy communities, profound adjustments will be required. Freyfogle's search leads him down unusual paths. He probes Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain for insights on the healing power of nature and tests the wisdom in Wendell Berry's fiction. He challenges journalists writing about environmental and land-use issues to get beyond familiar, misleading dichotomies to explain the true choices that Americans face. Freyfogle concludes the book by bringing together his insights in an imaginary job advertisement for a new kind of environmental leader and issuing a call to the conservation movement to recast its public rhetoric. In all, Agrarianism and the Good Society offers a critical yet hopeful guide for cultural change, essential for anyone interested in the benefits and creative possibilities of responsible land use.

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9780813124391

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Reviews

To own land is to assume a vital societal responsibility that extends across the landscape to neighbors, wildlife, and generations yet unborn. Such is Eric Freyfogle''s message in Agrarianism and the Good Society, a wide ranging and persuasively presented reexamination of our relationship to the earth that sustains us. As one of our most passionate and thoughtful scholars, Freyfogle draws upon the teachings of Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, and others, to set forth commonsense prescriptions for shifting societal attitudes toward property away from an individualistic ethic and toward community responsibility. In doing so, he challenges conventional ideas, reinvigorates traditional values, and offers a compelling new cultural view of land health. -- Robert B. Keiter, author of Keeping Faith with Nature: Ecosystems, Democracy, and America''s Public Lands

It is a political, ecological, intellectual, and personal work providing grand insight to the politics of our time. -- Material Culture In this diverse collection of essays, Freyfogle covers much well-worn intellectual terrain with fresh eyes as he explores issues of conservation, landuse, and environmental stewardship in engaging, folksy prose that will surely please audiences far beyond the academy. Indeed, this is not your typical academic book, and those who approach the work expecting a detached tome will surely be disappointed. -- Nicolaas Mink, Environmental History -- Nicolaas Mink, Environmental History Freyfogle's work is distinguished by its grasp of legal principles, its attention to history, its openness to insights from religious traditions, and its focus on the role of imagery and rhetoric in shaping our behavior. He also writes with a clarity and vigor that are rare today in prose informed by serious scholarly inquiry. However the shift to an ecologically wiser way of life comes about, the arguments laid out here, and especially the vision of land and community health, will point us in the direction we need to go. -- Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Private History of Awe Eric Freyfogle, one of the most astute observers of law and land in the U.S., here asks us to rethink the roots of the Good Society. This is an eloquent and wise book that calls us to return to agrarian fundamentals. Highly recommended. -- David W. Orr, author of Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Freyfogle manages to present even his boldest assertions of the necessity for a pro-life consercation movement in ways that make it a perfectly consistent and logical precondition for sound conservation. -- Tobias J. Lanz, Chronicles To own land is to assume a vital societal responsibility that extends across the landscape to neighbors, wildlife, and generations yet unborn. Such is Eric Freyfogle's message in Agrarianism and the Good Society, a wide ranging and persuasively presented reexamination of our relationship to the earth that sustains us. As one of our most passionate and thoughtful scholars, Freyfogle draws upon the teachings of Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, and others, to set forth commonsense prescriptions for shifting societal attitudes toward property away from an individualistic ethic and toward community responsibility. In doing so, he challenges conventional ideas, reinvigorates traditional values, and offers a compelling new cultural view of land health. -- Robert B. Keiter, author of Keeping Faith with Nature: Ecosystems, Democracy, a Agrarianism in the Good Society is the work of a seasoned thinker and activist. Freyfogle leaves the reader with the relieved sense that somewhere, somehow, capable people are actually thinking hard, and thinking practically, about the kinds of troubles politicians rarely dare to address. This book brims with clear thinking for muddled times. -- Eric J. Miller, Geneva College

It is a political, ecological, intellectual, and personal work providing grand insight to the politics of our time. -- Material Culture

It is a political, ecological, intellectual, and personal work providing grand insight to the politics of our time. -- Material Culture In this diverse collection of essays, Freyfogle covers much well-worn intellectual terrain with fresh eyes as he explores issues of conservation, landuse, and environmental stewardship in engaging, folksy prose that will surely please audiences far beyond the academy. Indeed, this is not your typical academic book, and those who approach the work expecting a detached tome will surely be disappointed. -- Nicolaas Mink, Environmental History -- Nicolaas Mink, Environmental History Freyfogle manages to present even his boldest assertions of the necessity for a pro-life consercation movement in ways that make it a perfectly consistent and logical precondition for sound conservation. -- Tobias J. Lanz, Chronicles Freyfogle's work is distinguished by its grasp of legal principles, its attention to history, its openness to insights from religious traditions, and its focus on the role of imagery and rhetoric in shaping our behavior. He also writes with a clarity and vigor that are rare today in prose informed by serious scholarly inquiry. However the shift to an ecologically wiser way of life comes about, the arguments laid out here, and especially the vision of land and community health, will point us in the direction we need to go. -- Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Private History of Awe To own land is to assume a vital societal responsibility that extends across the landscape to neighbors, wildlife, and generations yet unborn. Such is Eric Freyfogle's message in Agrarianism and the Good Society, a wide ranging and persuasively presented reexamination of our relationship to the earth that sustains us. As one of our most passionate and thoughtful scholars, Freyfogle draws upon the teachings of Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, and others, to set forth commonsense prescriptions for shifting societal attitudes toward property away from an individualistic ethic and toward community responsibility. In doing so, he challenges conventional ideas, reinvigorates traditional values, and offers a compelling new cultural view of land health. -- Robert B. Keiter, author of Keeping Faith with Nature: Ecosystems, Democracy, a Eric Freyfogle, one of the most astute observers of law and land in the U.S., here asks us to rethink the roots of the Good Society. This is an eloquent and wise book that calls us to return to agrarian fundamentals. Highly recommended. -- David W. Orr, author of Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Agrarianism in the Good Society is the work of a seasoned thinker and activist. Freyfogle leaves the reader with the relieved sense that somewhere, somehow, capable people are actually thinking hard, and thinking practically, about the kinds of troubles politicians rarely dare to address. This book brims with clear thinking for muddled times. -- Eric J. Miller, Geneva College

Author Information

Eric T. Freyfogle has written extensively on the fundamental links between people and place in such works as Why Conservation Is Failing and How It Can Regain Ground. Long active in state and local conservation efforts, he teaches at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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