The new agrarian mind

"The New Agrarian Mind synthesizes the thought of twentieth-century Agrarian writers. It weaves together discussions of major representative figures with myth-shattering analyses of the movement's cultural diversity, intellectural influence, and ideological complexity. Examined here are botanist and country-life advocate Liberty Hyde Bailey, rural sociologist Carle Zimmerman, economist Ralph Borsodi, novelist and farmer Louis Bromfield, the "Twelve Southerners" of Vanderbilt University, historian Herbert Agar, Iowa priest and rural activist Luigi Ligutti, and the poet-novelist-essayist Wendell Berry. Collectively labled the New Agrarians to distinguish them from the simpler Jeffersonianism of the nineteenth century, they shared a coherent set of goals that were at once socially conservative and economically radically.". "The story of these independent thinkers remains significant. The New Agrarians represented a serious attempt by modern America to create a "third way" in politics, one not easily fit onto the conventional left-right spectrum. Agrarian influences can be traced in the crafting of 1950s conservatism as well as the forging of the environmental movement in the 1970s. This book will be of significant interest to political scientists, economists, literary scholars, and sociologists."--BOOK JACKET.