A Golden Weed

“How did such a valuable crop thrive on land so poor? Why did the earth melt from under the fortunes of planters? Drew Swanson gives answers in a history of bright leaf that is also about the fate of a southern region, a plant and its environment, and the rise of the cigarette.”—Steven Stoll, author of Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth Century America -- Steven Stoll
“This book is a history of tobacco agriculture that will add to recent scholarship on the environmental history of staple crop plantations in the U.S. South; it is a significant contribution to this effort to re-write the agricultural history of the South in environmental terms.”—Mart A. Stewart, author of “What Nature Suffers to Groe” -- Mart A. Stewart
“A Golden Weed is agrarian history at its best. Avoiding convenient stereotypes, Swanson vividly demonstrates how bright-leaf tobacco farmers transformed the social relations and soils of the Piedmont South.”—Edward D. Melillo, Amherst College -- Edward D. Melillo
“Swanson’s finely grained appraisal of bright tobacco culture revises familiar accounts of commodity-crop agriculture, weaving a compelling narrative of economics, race relations, and the land in the Virginia-North Carolina Southside.”—Sara M. Gregg, author of Managing the Mountains -- Sara M. Gregg
“With his sure grasp of cultivation and deep insight into the social and ecological realities of growing bright-leaf tobacco, Swanson depicts a region degraded and impoverished not from simple ignorance or greed, but from a tragic inability to overcome economic and racial obstacles.”—Brian Donahue, co-editor of American Georgics: Writings on Farming, Culture, and the Land and author of The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord -- Brian Donahue
Won the Ohio Academy of History, for the junior faculty, 2015 Publication Award which is given “to an active member of the Academy” for an “outstanding publication in the field of history issued in the year preceding the annual meeting.”
-- Publication Award * Ohio Academy of History *
Winner of the 2015 Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award from the Agricultural History Society for the year's best book on agricultural hisotry -- Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award * Agricultural History Society *
“…Drew Swanson’s A Golden Weed is [a] well-researched study of tobacco in the Old Bright Belt…Swanson examines tobacco’s environmental history and deep-rooted connections to the region’s culture.”—Dale Coats, NCHR
-- Dale Coats * NCHR *
"A Golden Weed is thus both a cultural and an environmental history; Swanson is interested in ideas about land but also in the ways that the natural environment..."—Megan Kate Nelson, The Journal of American History -- Megan Kate Nelson * Journal of American History *
“Swanson excels in delivering what his title promised: a rigorous exploration of why generations of farmer’s sacrificed the integrity of the landscape they loved to grow soil-depleting tobacco. His persuasive arguments about this key issue now make it essential for future historians of southern agriculture”—Adrienne Monteith Petty, American Historical Review -- Adrienne Monteith Petty * American Historical Review *
Selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2015, in the botany category. -- Outstanding Academic Title * Choice *