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Louis Bromfield was a World War I ambulance driver, a Paris expat, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist as famous in the 1920s as Hemingway or Fitzgerald. But he cashed in his literary success to finance a wild agrarian dream in his native Ohio. The ideas he planted at his utopian experimental farm, Malabar, would inspire America's first generation of organic farmers and popularize the tenets of environmentalism years before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.
A lanky Midwestern farm boy dressed up like a Left Bank bohemian, Bromfield stood out in literary Paris for his lavish hospitality and his green thumb. He built a magnificent garden outside the city where he entertained aristocrats, movie stars, flower breeders, and writers of all stripes. Gertrude Stein enjoyed his food, Edith Wharton admired his roses, Ernest Hemingway boiled with jealousy over his critical acclaim. Millions savored his novels, which were turned into Broadway plays and Hollywood blockbusters, yet Bromfield's greatest passion was the soil.
In 1938, Bromfield returned to Ohio to transform 600 badly eroded acres into a thriving cooperative farm, which became a mecca for agricultural pioneers and a country retreat for celebrities like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (who were married there in 1945).
This sweeping biography unearths a lost icon of American culture, a fascinating, hilarious and unclassifiable character who--between writing and plowing--also dabbled in global politics and high society. Through it all, he fought for an agriculture that would enrich the soil and protect the planet. While Bromfield's name has faded into obscurity, his mission seems more critical today than ever before.
Independent Publishers Since 1923.
Register now for this upcoming virtual event with @steveheyman, author of the 2021 @IACPculinary award-winning book THE PLANTER OF MODERN LIFE. https://twitter.com/Ohioana/status/1459224955497893891
Writer, teacher, book reviewer, author of MOTHER COUNTRY, THE IMPERIAL WIFE and WHAT HAPPENED TO ANNA K.
Happy one-day late pub day to the fabulous @steveheyman . Check out his book on the farmer who inspired the organic food movement,The Planter of Modern Life! Great review in @KirkusReviews https://t.co/QC5RfCSum3
Founder @wwborders, exec ed @wwnorton. Mostly taking a break from Twitter to read for a while. (Art above by B. Amore/C. Burke)
So wonderful to see @brainpicker celebrate this book by @steveheyman! The Planter of Modern Life: How a Forgotten Visionary Pioneered Permaculture and Revolutionized Our Relationship with the Land https://t.co/mHo3ztBEJ1 via @brainpicker