"Insightful...empathetic...a thoughtful consideration of a topic that will have a substantial impact on our future."-Booklist Book Pick for Summer 2022-Civil Eats Ever wonder if there's a better way to live, work, and eat? You're not alone. Here is the story of five back-to-the-land movements, from 1840 to present day, when large numbers of utopian-minded people in the United States took action to establish small-scale farming as an alternative to mainstream agriculture. Then and now, it's the story of people striving to live freely and fight injustice, to make the food on their table a little healthier, and to leave the planet less scarred than they found it. Throughout America's history as an industrial nation, sizable countercultural movements have chosen to forgo modern comforts in pursuit of a simpler life. In this illuminating alternative American history, Margot Anne Kelley details the evolution of food-centric utopian movements that were fueled by deep yearnings for unpolluted water and air, racial and gender equality, for peace, for a less consumerist lifestyle, for a sense of authenticity, for simplicity, for a healthy diet, and for a sustaining connection to the natural world. Millennials who jettisoned cities for rural life form the core of America's current back-to-the-land movement. These young farmers helped meet surges in supplies for food when COVID-19 ravaged lives and economies, and laid bare limitations in America's industrial food supply chain. Their forebears were the utopians of the 1840s, including Thoreau and his fellow Transcendental friends who created Brook Farm and Fruitlands; the single taxers and "little landers" who created self-sufficient communities at the turn of the last century; Scott and Helen Nearing and others who decamped to the countryside during the Great Depression; and, of course, the hippie back-to-the-landers of the 1970s. Today, food has become an important element of the social justice movement. Food is no longer just about what we eat, but about how our food is raised and who profits along the way. Kelley looks closely at the efforts of young farmers now growing heirloom pigs, culturally appropriate foods, and newly bred vegetables, along with others working in coalitions, advocacy groups, and educational programs to extend the reach of this era's Good Food Movement. Foodtopia is for anyone interested in how we all might lead much better-and well-fed-lives.

John Hirsch chronicles the research, scientists, and ephemera of the Harvard Forest-a 3,750-acre research forest in Petersham, Massachusetts. Essays by David Foster, Clarisse Hart, and Margot Anne Kelley expand the scope of this photographic exploration at the nexus of science and art. Hirsch is attentive to both the quixotic and the beautiful, and has created a body of work that is about a desire to understand, describe, and predict the evolution of our surroundings, while showing reverence for the possibility of sublime moments in a place. The forest is here a microcosm for the world in which we live, and this work helps us envision the future we may inhabit, making the book a useful and engaging vantage from which to consider pressing issues of climate change, ecosystem resilience, and land and water use.

Old houses may not be haunted, but they retain many palpable vestiges of their pasts. And when Margot Anne Kelley and her husband, Rob, moved into an old farmhouse, they inherited that past as well as the property. On their one acre on Maine's mid-coast, they learned much about the history of their home not by visiting the local historical society but by spending time observing the trees, plants, and grasses that had been planted by those who once owned their land. What they discovered is a landscape history that harkens deep into New England's past. In this field guide to other people's trees, we learn about some of those past owners and their trees. Guided by Kelley's evocative text and gorgeous photographs, we come to appreciate the same lessons that she did-that plants carry the past into the present, that we are part of a rich and interconnected world. In sharing her property with us, Kelley gives us a glimpse of her unique part of New England, encouraging us by her own example to imagine the many gifts we, too, inherit with a house and plot of land. Intimate and informative, Kelley's field guide is a joy to read and a gift to all who share her love of nature and of place. Like the plants that define her land in Maine, this book invites readers to recognize that we can be fully grounded in our home place.