The hugely admired author of "The Last Fine Time" preserves and makes new the sights, smells, sounds, and poetry of country living. Klinkenborg reveals the beauty of the American landscape, not from a scenic overlook, but through a screened-in porch or from the window of a pickup driving down an empty highway in the teeth of an approaching storm.

Jane Adams focuses on the transformation of rural life in Union County, Illinois, as she explores the ways in which American farming has been experienced and understood in the twentieth century. Reconstructing the histories of seven farms, she places the

In this ground-breaking study, Shelley Baranowski not only explores how and why church-going Protestants in eastern Prussia turned to Nazism in large numbers, but also shows that the rural elite and the church propagated a myth of the stability, the wholesomeness, and the class-harmony--in short, the "sanctity"--of rural life, a myth that was a key component of Nazi propaganda that helped secure support for the Third Reich in rural areas. Of great interest to historians and students of the period as well as anyone interested in how a fringe radical movement gained wide popular support.

Seventeen original essays by prominent scholars uncover fascinating stories and personalities from the Upper Cumberland region of Kentucky and Tennessee, often regarded as isolated and out of pace with the rest of the country, but seen here as having a far richer history and culture than previously thought.

The Routledge Handbook of Medieval Rural Life brings together the latest research on peasantry in medieval Europe. The aim is to place peasants – as small-scale agricultural producers – firmly at the centre of this volume, as people with agency, immense skill and resilience to shape their environments, cultures and societies. This volume examines the changes and evolutions within village societies across the medieval period, over a broad chronology and across a wide geography. Rural structures, families and hierarchies are examined alongside tool use and trade, as well as the impact of external factors such as famine and the Black Death. The contributions offer insights into multidisciplinary research, incorporating archaeological as well as landscape studies alongside traditional historical documentary approaches across widely differing local and regional contexts across medieval Europe. This book will be an essential reference for scholars and students of medieval history, as well those interested in rural, cultural and social history.

Prairie Town: Redefining Rural Life in the Age of Globalization describes the contemporary rural condition and efforts to sustain rural life in one small Minnesota community at the turn of the 21st century. Like many other agricultural based towns, Prairie Town struggled for survival within the context of the on-going farm crisis, NAFTA, neoliberal agricultural policies, and growing agribusiness that negatively impacted many farmers throughout the world. The effects of globalization, the displacement of rural workers to urban areas, and the deterioration of rural life were a widespread phenomenon. In spite of these complex issues, Prairie Town worked to define a new rural— life, one which entailed a new rural literacy—a new way of reading rural life-that changed the way rural life, work, and education were realized. Prairie Town's story offers us hope as we learn that neoliberalism is not inevitable, nor is the demise of rural America. From this community, we learn that not everything can be bought and sold, and disidentification with dominant societal structures is possible within a participatory democratic society. New cultural models can be constructed that enable individuals in Prairie Town and elsewhere to actively work to construct ways of being that are consistent with their values and hopes for how they might live together.

Foot and mouth disease and BSE have both had a devastating impact on rural society. Alongside these devastating developments, the rise of the organic food movement has helped to revitalize an already politicized rural population. From fox-hunting to farming, the vigour with which rural activities and living are defended overturns received notions of a sleepy and complacent countryside. Over the years "rural life" has been defined, redefined and eventually fallen out of fashion as a sociological concept--in contrast to urban studies, which has flourished. This much-needed reappraisal calls for its reinterpretation in light of the profound changes affecting the countryside. First providing an overview of rural sociology, Hillyard goes on to offer contemporary case studies that clearly demonstrate the need for a reinvigorated rural sociology. Tackling a range of contentious issues--from fox-hunting to organic farming--this book offers a new model for rural sociology and reassesses its role in contemporary society.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

One of the many changes that transformed nineteenth-century agrarian life was the shift in the dairy industry from home to factory butter- and cheesemaking. In the early nineteenth century virtually all such work took place on the family farm. But after about 1860, production began to move from farms to local "crossroads factories." In Transforming Rural Life Sally McMurry takes a new look at the underlying causes of this development and its implications for the dairying families who were the mainstays of northeastern agriculture. Unlike previous books, which cast this transformation primarily in economic terms, McMurry's work emphasizes the role of social systems, cultural values, material culture, and family dynamics. She argues that a key factor in the change was simply the resistance of women to the burden of home cheesemaking (many households produced thousands of pounds every season). When the technology and economic conditions permitted, the transition to factory production took place quickly--not because farm families made more money, but because taking the milk to factories helped resolve domestic tensions. As a result, patterns of life began to change--freeing women for new tasks, encouraging increased reliance on the market economy and new cash crops, and emphasizing wage work, which in turn affected the reorganization of the domestic economy. Sally A. McMurry teaches history at the Pennsylvania State University. She is the author of Families and Farmhouses in Nineteenth-Century America: Vernacular Design and Social Change.