-
Uprooted
- Recovering the Legacy of the Places We've Left Behind
- Narrated by: Grace Olmstead
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $15.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
"A superior exploration of the consequences of the hollowing out of our agricultural heartlands." (Kirkus Reviews)
In the tradition of Wendell Berry, a young writer wrestles with what we owe the places we’ve left behind.
In the tiny farm town of Emmett, Idaho, there are two kinds of people: those who leave and those who stay. Those who leave go in search of greener pastures, better jobs, and college. Those who stay are left to contend with thinning communities, punishing government farm policy, and environmental decay.
Grace Olmstead, now a journalist in Washington, DC, is one who left, and in Uprooted, she examines the heartbreaking consequences of uprooting - for Emmett, and for the greater heartland America. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Uprooted wrestles with the questions of what we owe the places we come from and what we are willing to sacrifice for profit and progress.
As part of her own quest to decide whether or not to return to her roots, Olmstead revisits the stories of those who, like her great-grandparents and grandparents, made Emmett a strong community and her childhood idyllic. She looks at the stark realities of farming life today, identifying the government policies and big agriculture practices that make it almost impossible for such towns to survive. And she explores the ranks of Emmett’s newcomers and what growth means for the area’s farming tradition.
Avoiding both sentimental devotion to the past and blind faith in progress, Olmstead uncovers ways modern life attacks all of our roots, both metaphorical and literal. She brings listeners face to face with the damage and brain drain left in the wake of our pursuit of self-improvement, economic opportunity, and so-called growth. Ultimately, she comes to an uneasy conclusion for herself: one can cultivate habits and practices that promote rootedness wherever one may be, but: Some things, once lost, cannot be recovered.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Worst Hard Time
- The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: Jacob York
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, he does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes.
-
-
Excellent history ruined by Egan's bias & cynicism
- By Nathan on 03-21-23
By: Timothy Egan
-
A Severe Mercy
- By: Sheldon Vanauken
- Narrated by: Peter Chanice
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beloved, profoundly moving account of the author's marriage, the couple's search for faith and friendship with C. S. Lewis, and a spiritual strength that sustained Vanauken after his wife's untimely death.
-
-
Outstanding
- By Jeffrey on 12-03-16
By: Sheldon Vanauken
-
The Unsettling of America
- Culture & Agriculture
- By: Wendell Berry
- Narrated by: Nick Offerman
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since its publication in 1977, The Unsettling of America has been recognized as a classic of American letters. In it, Wendell Berry argues that good farming is a cultural and spiritual discipline. Today’s agribusiness, however, takes farming out of its cultural context and away from families. As a result, we as a nation are more estranged from the land - from the intimate knowledge, love, and care of it.
-
-
love the material, meh on the performance.
- By Fireham on 07-10-20
By: Wendell Berry
-
Old-Fashioned on Purpose
- Cultivating a Slower, More Joyful Life
- By: Jill Winger
- Narrated by: Jill Winger, Andrew Eiden
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the pandemic hit in 2020, flour and vegetable seeds flew off the shelves. But homesteader and entrepreneur Jill Winger believes these longings for sourdough bread and fresh veggies are more than a trend. As our society races toward progress, we’ve left something important behind. We are more connected than ever before, yet we’re still feeling unfulfilled. In Old-Fashioned on Purpose, Winger shows how simplifying our lives and adopting retro skills such as gardening and handiwork can be the key to creating the happy and healthy life we’re yearning for.
-
-
A bit disappointed (so far)
- By Leah on 09-27-23
By: Jill Winger
-
Gilgamesh
- A New English Version
- By: Stephen Mitchell - translator
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This brilliant new treatment of the world's oldest epic is a literary event on par with Seamus Heaney's wildly popular Beowulf translation. Esteemed translator and best-selling author Stephen Mitchell energizes a heroic tale so old it predates Homer's Iliad by more than a millennium.
-
-
A defense of this "translation"
- By George on 07-16-08
-
Strange New World
- How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution
- By: Carl R. Trueman, Ryan T. Anderson - foreword
- Narrated by: Carl R. Trueman
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How did the world arrive at its current, disorienting state of identity politics, and how should the church respond? Historian Carl R. Trueman discusses how influences ranging from traditional institutions to technology and pornography moved modern culture toward an era of "expressive individualism." Investigating philosophies from the Romantics, Nietzsche, Marx, Wilde, Freud, and the New Left, he outlines the history of Western thought to the distinctly sexual direction of present-day identity politics and explains the modern implications of these ideas.
-
-
Read and reread
- By Daniel on 04-04-22
By: Carl R. Trueman, and others
-
The Worst Hard Time
- The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: Jacob York
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, he does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes.
-
-
Excellent history ruined by Egan's bias & cynicism
- By Nathan on 03-21-23
By: Timothy Egan
-
A Severe Mercy
- By: Sheldon Vanauken
- Narrated by: Peter Chanice
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beloved, profoundly moving account of the author's marriage, the couple's search for faith and friendship with C. S. Lewis, and a spiritual strength that sustained Vanauken after his wife's untimely death.
-
-
Outstanding
- By Jeffrey on 12-03-16
By: Sheldon Vanauken
-
The Unsettling of America
- Culture & Agriculture
- By: Wendell Berry
- Narrated by: Nick Offerman
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since its publication in 1977, The Unsettling of America has been recognized as a classic of American letters. In it, Wendell Berry argues that good farming is a cultural and spiritual discipline. Today’s agribusiness, however, takes farming out of its cultural context and away from families. As a result, we as a nation are more estranged from the land - from the intimate knowledge, love, and care of it.
-
-
love the material, meh on the performance.
- By Fireham on 07-10-20
By: Wendell Berry
-
Old-Fashioned on Purpose
- Cultivating a Slower, More Joyful Life
- By: Jill Winger
- Narrated by: Jill Winger, Andrew Eiden
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the pandemic hit in 2020, flour and vegetable seeds flew off the shelves. But homesteader and entrepreneur Jill Winger believes these longings for sourdough bread and fresh veggies are more than a trend. As our society races toward progress, we’ve left something important behind. We are more connected than ever before, yet we’re still feeling unfulfilled. In Old-Fashioned on Purpose, Winger shows how simplifying our lives and adopting retro skills such as gardening and handiwork can be the key to creating the happy and healthy life we’re yearning for.
-
-
A bit disappointed (so far)
- By Leah on 09-27-23
By: Jill Winger
-
Gilgamesh
- A New English Version
- By: Stephen Mitchell - translator
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This brilliant new treatment of the world's oldest epic is a literary event on par with Seamus Heaney's wildly popular Beowulf translation. Esteemed translator and best-selling author Stephen Mitchell energizes a heroic tale so old it predates Homer's Iliad by more than a millennium.
-
-
A defense of this "translation"
- By George on 07-16-08
-
Strange New World
- How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution
- By: Carl R. Trueman, Ryan T. Anderson - foreword
- Narrated by: Carl R. Trueman
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How did the world arrive at its current, disorienting state of identity politics, and how should the church respond? Historian Carl R. Trueman discusses how influences ranging from traditional institutions to technology and pornography moved modern culture toward an era of "expressive individualism." Investigating philosophies from the Romantics, Nietzsche, Marx, Wilde, Freud, and the New Left, he outlines the history of Western thought to the distinctly sexual direction of present-day identity politics and explains the modern implications of these ideas.
-
-
Read and reread
- By Daniel on 04-04-22
By: Carl R. Trueman, and others
-
The Iliad & The Odyssey
- By: Homer
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 28 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Little is known about the Ancient Greek oral poet Homer, the supposed 8th century BC author of the world-read Iliad and his later masterpiece, The Odyssey. These classic epics provided the basis for Greek education and culture throughout the classical age and formed the backbone of humane education through the birth of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity.
-
-
Worth the price, worth the time
- By Sam on 12-31-04
By: Homer
-
Farmer Giles of Ham
- By: J. R. R. Tolkien
- Narrated by: Derek Jacobi
- Length: 1 hr and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Farmer Giles of Ham did not look like a hero. He was fat and red-bearded and enjoyed a slow, comfortable life. Then one day a rather deaf and short-sighted giant blundered on to his land. More by luck than skill, Farmer Giles managed to scare him away. The people of the village cheered: Farmer Giles was a hero. His reputation spread far and wide across the kingdom. So it was natural that when the dragon Chrysophylax visited the area it was Farmer Giles who was expected to do battle with it!
-
-
Farmer to King
- By James on 06-30-14
By: J. R. R. Tolkien
-
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self
- Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution
- By: Carl R. Trueman
- Narrated by: Carl R. Trueman, Rod Dreher
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision in 2015, sexual identity has dominated both public discourse and cultural trends — yet no historical phenomenon is its own cause. From Augustine to Marx, various views and perspectives have contributed to the modern understanding of the self.
-
-
Best book I read in 2021 by far
- By Jfree on 12-18-21
By: Carl R. Trueman
-
Little House in the Big Woods
- Little House, Book 1
- By: Laura Ingalls Wilder
- Narrated by: Cherry Jones
- Length: 3 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Told from four-year-old Laura's point of view, this story begins in 1871 in a little log cabin on the edge of the Big Woods of Wisconsin. Laura lives in the little house with her pa, her ma, her sisters Mary and Carrie, and their trusty dog, Jack. Pioneer life is sometimes hard for the family, since they must grow or catch all their own food as they get ready for the cold winter. But it is also exciting as Laura and her family celebrate Christmas with homemade toys and treats, do the spring planting, bring in the harvest, and make their first trip into town.
-
-
GRANDMA WAS JIGGING
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 02-16-17
-
Consider This
- Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition
- By: Karen Glass
- Narrated by: Donna-Jean A. Breckenridge
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The educators of ancient Greece and Rome gave the world a vision of what education should be. The medieval and Renaissance teachers valued their insights and lofty goals. Christian educators such as Augustine, Erasmus, Milton, and Comenius drew from the teaching of Plato, Aristotle, and Quintilian those truths which they found universal and potent. Charlotte Mason developed her own philosophy of education from the riches of the past, not accidentally but purposefully.
-
-
Beautifully read with clarity and understanding
- By Kay Pelham on 01-19-20
By: Karen Glass
-
Rise of the Fourth Reich
- Confronting COVID Fascism with a New Nuremberg Trial, So This Never Happens Again
- By: Steve Deace, Daniel Horowitz
- Narrated by: Daniel Horowitz, Richard Cefalos, Zachary Cameron, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
COVID-19 was used to launch the worst tyranny in American history, which we’re still facing even now. It was also the worst oppression in global history since the Third Reich. Just as that evil required a reckoning at Nuremberg, this one does as well. In this Nuremberg 2.0, we call witnesses that our elected representatives and law enforcement agents need to hear from in order to know the full extent of the evil and who is responsible for it—so that this never happens again.
-
-
Audible format is fantastic! Must listen!
- By Kathryn J. Dolbow on 02-24-23
By: Steve Deace, and others
-
Gladys Aylward: The Adventure of a Lifetime
- By: Janet Benge, Geoff Benge
- Narrated by: Rebecca Gallagher
- Length: 4 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the powerful story of Gladys Aylward. Without formal education or a missionary organization to back her, Gladys raised her own finances for the overland trip that would bring her to the country and people that God had etched so deeply on her heart.... China! What follows is an amazing adventure of faith and determination. Gladys Aylward, a housemaid from England, dared to trust God in the face of dire and seemingly hopeless circumstances. Her amazing adventure of faith and determination is one of the truly great missionary stories of our era.
-
-
Good book for youth
- By Jackie O. on 01-05-15
By: Janet Benge, and others
-
Modern Miss Mason
- By: Leah Boden
- Narrated by: Leah Boden
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a young mother and new home educator, Leah was overwhelmed by the breadth of available resources. How to know which to choose? What would best guide and inspire her children? Whose voices should she trust? That’s when she discovered the timeless work and words of Charlotte Mason. A groundbreaking and revolutionary voice in education, Charlotte breathed life and beauty back into childhood in a stiff archaic age, opening the eyes of parent-teachers and the hearts of students—and changing the future of home education.
-
-
A gift
- By Amazon Customer on 05-10-23
By: Leah Boden
-
Battle for the American Mind
- Uprooting a Century of Miseducation
- By: Pete Hegseth, David Goodwin
- Narrated by: Pete Hegseth, David Goodwin
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Behind a smokescreen of “preparing students for the new industrial economy,” early progressives had political control in mind. America’s original schools didn’t just make kids memorize facts or learn skills; they taught them to think freely and arrive at wisdom. They assigned the classics, inspired love of God and country, and raised future citizens that changed the world forever.
-
-
Academically sound
- By Rick Townsend on 07-21-22
By: Pete Hegseth, and others
-
A Bold Return to Giving a Damn
- One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food
- By: Will Harris
- Narrated by: Will Harris
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Raised as a fourth-generation farmer, when Will Harris inherited White Oak Pastures he was a full-time commodity cowboy who played hard and fast with every tool the system offered–chemicals, antibiotics, steroids, and more. His ancestors had built a highly profitable, conventionally run machine, but over time he found himself disgusted with the excess, cruelty, and smalltown devastation this system entailed. So he bet the farm on forging a different way of doing things. One that works with nature not against it, and bridges the quickly widening delta between consumers and their food.
-
-
Lie after lie. Complete NARCISSIST!!! Don’t waste your time
- By Roni Crone on 11-24-23
By: Will Harris
-
Dirt to Soil
- One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture
- By: Gabe Brown
- Narrated by: Gabe Brown
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Dirt to Soil, Gabe Brown tells the story of his ranch's amazing journey and offers a wealth of innovative solutions to our most pressing and complex contemporary agricultural challenge - restoring the soil. The Brown’s Ranch model, developed over 20 years of experimentation and refinement, focuses on regenerating resources by continuously enhancing the living biology in the soil.
-
-
loved it.
- By Amazon Customer on 01-29-19
By: Gabe Brown
-
One Size Fits None
- A Farm Girl’s Search for the Promise of Regenerative Agriculture
- By: Stephanie Anderson
- Narrated by: Aven Shore
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In One Size Fits None, Anderson follows diverse farmers across the United States: A South Dakota bison rancher who provides an alternative to the industrial feedlot; an organic vegetable farmer in Florida who harvests microgreens; a New Mexico super-small farmer who revitalizes communities; and a North Dakota midsize farmer who combines livestock and grain farming to convert expensive farmland back to native prairie. The use of these nontraditional agricultural techniques show how varied operations can give back to the earth rather than degrade it.
-
-
Very informative planning to recommend to friends
- By Sarah Moon on 10-23-19
Critic reviews
“Olmstead does the important work of examining perhaps the most overlooked aspect of American identity: place. For those privileged enough to choose where they make their home, she suggests a value set beyond cultural prestige and financial conquest - belonging, commitment, stewardship. Uprooted offers our fractured society a path toward wholeness.” (Sarah Smarsh, author of Heartland)
“Many rural young Americans face a conundrum - should they stay true to their roots and lose out on a big career, or leave behind those they love to try to make a difference in the world? Olmstead handles this problem beautifully and honestly, highlighting its urgency, all while avoiding easy answers.” (Chris Arnade, author of Dignity)
“Uprooted helps us understand what is lost when people lose their connections to particular lands and communities. It also helps us appreciate what is gained by a patient and enduring commitment to nurture the places and people that nurture us. Reading Olmstead’s book confirms that the need for roots is one of humanity’s universal and essential needs.” (Norman Wirzba, Gilbert T. Rowe distinguished professor of Christian theology at Duke University Divinity School)
Related to this topic
-
We Are Each Other's Harvest
- Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy
- By: Natalie Baszile
- Narrated by: Tina Lifford
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this impressive anthology, Natalie Baszile brings together essays, poems, quotes, conversations, and first-person stories to examine Black people’s connection to the American land from Emancipation to today. We Are Each Other’s Harvest elevates the voices and stories of Black farmers and people of color, celebrating their perseverance and resilience, while spotlighting the challenges they continue to face. Luminous and eye-opening, this eclectic collection helps people and communities of color today reimagine what it means to be dedicated to the soil.
-
-
Various Voices
- By Peggy Sweeney on 11-06-21
By: Natalie Baszile
-
Lentil Underground
- Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in America
- By: Liz Carlisle
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The story of the "Lentil Underground" begins on a 280-acre homestead rooted in America's Great Plains: the Oien family farm. Forty years ago, corporate agribusiness told small farmers like the Oiens to "get big or get out." But 27-year-old David Oien decided to take a stand, becoming the first in his conservative Montana county to plant a radically different crop: organic lentils. Unlike the chemically dependent grains American farmers had been told to grow, lentils make their own fertilizer and tolerate variable climates, so their farmers aren't beholden to industrial methods.
-
-
Fingers on the pulse of sustainable ag
- By shakinfist on 06-30-20
By: Liz Carlisle
-
The Good Food Revolution
- Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities
- By: Will Allen, Charles Wilson - with, Eric Schlosser - foreword
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A pioneering urban farmer and MacArthur "Genius Award" winner points the way to building a new food system that can feed - and heal - broken communities. An eco-classic in the making, The Good Food Revolution is the story of Will's personal journey, the lives he has touched, and a grassroots movement that is changing the way our nation eats.
-
-
This story teaches how to take back the soil
- By Shawn Borup on 11-09-19
By: Will Allen, and others
-
Living in the Long Emergency
- Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward
- By: James Howard Kunstler
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his 2005 book, The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler described the global predicaments that would pitch the USA into political and economic turmoil in the 21st century - the end of affordable oil, climate irregularities, and flagging economic growth, to name a few. Now, he returns with a book that takes an up-close-and-personal approach to how real people are living now - surviving The Long Emergency as it happens.
-
-
Please Read Before Buying
- By K. Skoog on 05-12-20
-
Enough
- Why the World's Poorest Starve in An Age of Plenty
- By: Roger Thurow, Scott Kilman
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For more than 30 years, humankind has known how to grow enough food to end chronic hunger worldwide. Yet while the Green Revolution succeeded in South America and Asia, it never got to Africa. More than 9 million people every year die of hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases every yearmost of them in Africa and most of them children. More die of hunger in Africa than from AIDS and malaria combined. Now, an impending global food crisis threatens to make things worse.
-
-
It's Time For Us To Be More Compassionate
- By James on 07-18-10
By: Roger Thurow, and others
-
A Revolution Down on the Farm
- The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929
- By: Paul K. Conkin
- Narrated by: Kevin Pierce
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century.
-
-
Excellent review of farming history in US
- By Joanne on 01-26-14
By: Paul K. Conkin
-
We Are Each Other's Harvest
- Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy
- By: Natalie Baszile
- Narrated by: Tina Lifford
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this impressive anthology, Natalie Baszile brings together essays, poems, quotes, conversations, and first-person stories to examine Black people’s connection to the American land from Emancipation to today. We Are Each Other’s Harvest elevates the voices and stories of Black farmers and people of color, celebrating their perseverance and resilience, while spotlighting the challenges they continue to face. Luminous and eye-opening, this eclectic collection helps people and communities of color today reimagine what it means to be dedicated to the soil.
-
-
Various Voices
- By Peggy Sweeney on 11-06-21
By: Natalie Baszile
-
Lentil Underground
- Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in America
- By: Liz Carlisle
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The story of the "Lentil Underground" begins on a 280-acre homestead rooted in America's Great Plains: the Oien family farm. Forty years ago, corporate agribusiness told small farmers like the Oiens to "get big or get out." But 27-year-old David Oien decided to take a stand, becoming the first in his conservative Montana county to plant a radically different crop: organic lentils. Unlike the chemically dependent grains American farmers had been told to grow, lentils make their own fertilizer and tolerate variable climates, so their farmers aren't beholden to industrial methods.
-
-
Fingers on the pulse of sustainable ag
- By shakinfist on 06-30-20
By: Liz Carlisle
-
The Good Food Revolution
- Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities
- By: Will Allen, Charles Wilson - with, Eric Schlosser - foreword
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A pioneering urban farmer and MacArthur "Genius Award" winner points the way to building a new food system that can feed - and heal - broken communities. An eco-classic in the making, The Good Food Revolution is the story of Will's personal journey, the lives he has touched, and a grassroots movement that is changing the way our nation eats.
-
-
This story teaches how to take back the soil
- By Shawn Borup on 11-09-19
By: Will Allen, and others
-
Living in the Long Emergency
- Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward
- By: James Howard Kunstler
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his 2005 book, The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler described the global predicaments that would pitch the USA into political and economic turmoil in the 21st century - the end of affordable oil, climate irregularities, and flagging economic growth, to name a few. Now, he returns with a book that takes an up-close-and-personal approach to how real people are living now - surviving The Long Emergency as it happens.
-
-
Please Read Before Buying
- By K. Skoog on 05-12-20
-
Enough
- Why the World's Poorest Starve in An Age of Plenty
- By: Roger Thurow, Scott Kilman
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For more than 30 years, humankind has known how to grow enough food to end chronic hunger worldwide. Yet while the Green Revolution succeeded in South America and Asia, it never got to Africa. More than 9 million people every year die of hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases every yearmost of them in Africa and most of them children. More die of hunger in Africa than from AIDS and malaria combined. Now, an impending global food crisis threatens to make things worse.
-
-
It's Time For Us To Be More Compassionate
- By James on 07-18-10
By: Roger Thurow, and others
-
A Revolution Down on the Farm
- The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929
- By: Paul K. Conkin
- Narrated by: Kevin Pierce
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century.
-
-
Excellent review of farming history in US
- By Joanne on 01-26-14
By: Paul K. Conkin
-
Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman
- Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland
- By: Miriam Horn
- Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Many of the men and women doing today's most consequential environmental work - restoring America's grasslands, wildlife, soil, rivers, wetlands, and oceans - would not call themselves environmentalists; they would be too uneasy with the connotations of that word. What drives them is their deep love of the land - the iconic terrain where explorers and cowboys, pioneers, and riverboat captains forged the American identity. They feel a moral responsibility to preserve this heritage and natural wealth.
-
-
great stories
- By GMMT on 05-15-18
By: Miriam Horn
-
Ramp Hollow
- The Ordeal of Appalachia
- By: Steven Stoll
- Narrated by: Brian Sutherland
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Appalachia - among the most storied and yet least understood regions in America - has long been associated with poverty and backwardness. But how did this image arise, and what exactly does it mean? In Ramp Hollow, Steven Stoll launches an original investigation into the history of Appalachia and its place in US history, with a special emphasis on how generations of its inhabitants lived, worked, survived, and depended on natural resources held in common.
-
-
Almost unlistenable
- By Golf Fan on 09-13-18
By: Steven Stoll
-
Running Out
- In Search of Water on the High Plains
- By: Lucas Bessire
- Narrated by: John Chancer
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. The imminent depletion of the Ogallala and other aquifers around the world is a defining planetary crisis of our times. Running Out offers a uniquely personal account of aquifer depletion and the deeper layers through which it gains meaning and force.
-
-
Water is life, so….
- By Caroline Pufalt on 11-29-21
By: Lucas Bessire
-
Uncultivated
- Wild Apples, Real Cider, and the Complicated Art of Making a Living
- By: Andy Brennan
- Narrated by: Brett Barry
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long before the advent of conventional farming methods - which have focused on constant growth, human intervention, and genetic homogeneity - the apple had already grown to become the ubiquitous all-American symbol it is today. Known for their hardiness, ability to adapt to new environments, natural diversity, and plentiful bounty, wildly grown apples were once known as “America’s fruit” throughout the trading world.
-
-
Really good narrator
- By Landon & Sarah on 03-28-24
By: Andy Brennan
-
The Soil Will Save Us
- How Scientists, Farmers, and Ranchers Are Tending the Soil to Reverse Global Warming
- By: Kristin Ohlson
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming. Her discoveries and vivid storytelling will revolutionize the way we think about our food, our landscapes, our plants, and our relationship to Earth.
-
-
Rambling, mile wide, inch deep treatment of a subject
- By Charles Phillips on 10-17-18
By: Kristin Ohlson
-
Boom, Bust, Exodus
- The Rust Belt, the Maquilas, and a Tale of Two Cities
- By: Chad Broughton
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 15 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2002, the town of Galesburg, a slowly declining Rustbelt city of 33,000 in western Illinois, learned that it would soon lose its largest factory, a Maytag refrigerator plant that had anchored Galesburg's social and economic life for decades. Workers at the plant earned $15.14 an hour, had good insurance, and were assured a solid retirement. In 2004, the plant was relocated to Reynosa, Mexico, where workers sometimes spent 13-hour days assembling refrigerators for $1.10 an hour.
-
-
A Story I thought I Knew
- By Meek84 on 07-08-18
By: Chad Broughton
-
Farmageddon
- The True Cost of Cheap Meat
- By: Philip Lymbery, Isabel Oakeshott
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Farm animals have been disappearing from our fields as the production of food has become a global industry. We no longer know for certain what is entering the food chain and what we are eating - as the UK horsemeat scandal demonstrated. We are reaching a tipping point as the farming revolution threatens our countryside, health, and the quality of our food wherever we live in the world.
-
-
Excellent insight of industrial farming
- By Grazyna on 04-19-14
By: Philip Lymbery, and others
-
Organic Manifesto
- How Organic Food Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe
- By: Maria Rodale, Eric Scholsser - foreword
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing on findings from leading health researchers as well as conversations with both chemical and organic farmers from coast to coast, Maria Rodale irrefutably outlines the unacceptably high cost of chemical farming on our health and our environment. She traces the genesis of chemical farming and the rise of the immense companies that profit from it, bringing to light the government's role in allowing such practices to flourish.
-
-
those in power must read and work upon it.
- By Jaktip on 12-20-17
By: Maria Rodale, and others
-
The Meat Racket
- The Secret Takeover of America's Food Business
- By: Christopher Leonard
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How much do you know about the meat on your dinner plate? Journalist Christopher Leonard spent more than a decade covering the country's biggest meat companies, including four years as the national agribusiness reporter for the Associated Press. Now he delivers the first comprehensive look inside the industrial meat system, exposing how a handful of companies executed an audacious corporate takeover of the nation's meat supply.
-
-
Hits the nail on the head.
- By Anonymous 8888 on 02-04-15
-
Countdown
- Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?
- By: Alan Weisman
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 18 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Weisman visits an extraordinary range of the world's cultures, religions, nationalities, tribes, and political systems to learn what in their beliefs, histories, liturgies, or current circumstances might suggest that sometimes it's in their own best interest to limit their growth.
-
-
Boring
- By NorthFLADiver on 01-14-14
By: Alan Weisman
-
The Idealist
- Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty
- By: Nina Munk
- Narrated by: Susan Nezami
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jeffrey Sachs - celebrated economist, special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and author of the influential best seller The End of Poverty - disagrees. In his view, poverty is a problem that can be solved. With single-minded determination he has attempted to put into practice his theories about ending extreme poverty, to prove that the world's most destitute people can be lifted onto "the ladder of development."
-
-
Sachs tries hard but the system is not there
- By Amazon Customer on 11-13-15
By: Nina Munk
-
Land
- How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Land - whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city - is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing - and have done - with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet.
-
-
Audiobook Version is the Best!
- By semarla on 01-31-21
By: Simon Winchester