"Notes from the Ground" examines the cultural conditions that brought agriculture and science together in nineteenth-century America. Integrating the history of science, environmental history, and science studies, the book shows how and why agrarian Americans - yeoman farmers, gentleman planters, politicians, and policy makers alike - accepted, resisted, and shaped scientific ways of knowing the land. By detailing the changing perceptions of soil treatment, Benjamin Cohen shows that the credibility of new soil practices grew not from the arrival of professional chemists, but out of an existing ideology of work, knowledge, and citizenship.

Benjamin R. Cohen is Assistant Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the University of Virginia.

""Notes from the Ground" encompasses the entire subject of science and the environment during the nineteenth century. Cohen writes with grace, clarity, and insight about the 'georgic science' of American farmers--a philosophy that resonates in the present, meant to 'reveal rather than conceal our connections to the land.'"--Steven Stoll, author of "Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America"--Steven Stoll