An epic story of the American wheat harvest, the politics of food, and the culture of the Great Plains For over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in the panhandle of Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in bohemian Carmel, California, with her father and her Japanese mother, knew little about farming when she inherited this land. Her father had all but forsworn it. In American Harvest, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical Christian wheat harvesters through the heartland at the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family’s fields for decades. As Mockett follows Wolgemuth’s crew on the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho, they contemplate what Wolgemuth refers to as “the divide,” inadvertently peeling back layers of the American story to expose its contradictions and unhealed wounds. She joins the crew in the fields, attends church, and struggles to adapt to the rhythms of rural life, all the while continually reminded of her own status as a person who signals “not white,” but who people she encounters can’t quite categorize. American Harvest is an extraordinary evocation of the land and a thoughtful exploration of ingrained beliefs, from evangelical skepticism of evolution to cosmopolitan assumptions about food production and farming. With exquisite lyricism and humanity, this astonishing book attempts to reconcile competing versions of our national story.

Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern spent more than seven years traveling in Laos, talking to farmers, scrap-metal hunters, people who make and use tools from UXO, people who hunt for death beneath the earth and render it harmless. With their words and photographs, they reveal the beauty of Laos, the strength of Laotians, and the commitment of bomb-disposal teams. People take precedence in this account, which is deeply personal without ever becoming a polemic.

In the summer of 1967, in response to violent demonstrations that rocked 164 U.S. cities, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, a.k.a. the Kerner Commission, was formed. The Commission sought reasons for the disturbances, including the role that law enforcement played. Chief among its research projects was a study of 23 American cities, headed by social psychologist Robert Shellow. An early draft of the scientists’ analysis, titled “The Harvest of American Racism: The Political Meaning of Violence in the Summer of 1967,” provoked the Commission’s staff in November 1967 by uncovering political causes for the unrest; the team of researchers was fired, and the controversial report remained buried at the LBJ Presidential Library until now. The first publication of the Harvest report half a century later reveals that many of the issues it describes are still with us, including how cities might more effectively and humanely react to groups and communities in protest. In addition to the complete text of the suppressed Harvest report, the book includes an introduction by Robert Shellow that provides useful historical context; personal recollections from four of the report’s surviving social scientists, Robert Shellow, David Boesel, Gary T. Marx, and David O. Sears; and an appendix outlining the differences between the unpublished Harvest analysis and the well-known Kerner Commission Report that followed it. “The [Harvest of American Racism] report was rejected by Johnson administration functionaries as being far too radical—politically ‘unviable’… Social science can play an extremely positive role in fighting racial and other injustice and inequality, but only if it is matched with a powerful political will to implement the findings. That will has never come from within an American presidential administration—that will has only been forged in black and other radical communities’ movements for justice. The political power for change, as incremental as it has been, has come from within those communities. Washington responds, it does not lead." —from the Foreword by Michael C. Dawson “In the summer of 1967 the Kerner Commission hired a team of social scientists to explain the cause of the riots that had engulfed dozens of American cities. Their report, The Harvest of American Racism, was so controversial that the commission staff ordered it destroyed. Now, Robert Shellow and his team have published Harvest, along with insightful and revealing essays that provide appropriate context and perspective. This is an important book that is as relevant today as it was five decades ago.” —Steven M. Gillon, author of Separate and Unequal: The Kerner Commission and the Unraveling of American Liberalism “In 1968 the Kerner Commission concluded that cities across the nation had been erupting because blacks were frustrated with the slow pace of racial and economic equality. It turns out that the Commission had been presented with a far more radical analysis of those urban uprisings, in an extraordinary report called The Harvest of American Racism. This report was not only ignored, but actively suppressed. Now black rage is once again rocking our nation’s major cities, and it is past time that we take a close look at what policymakers dismissed 50 years ago. As the Harvest report made clear, those who took to the streets in 1968 weren’t merely frustrated and filled with despair. They were politically engaged, they believed that racial oppression’s root causes must be addressed rather than its surface expressions, and they would never stop erupting until change really happened. The Harvest of American Racism is a must-read, as relevant today as it was 50 years ago.” —Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy “This seminal study from the 1960s provides a hard-hitting and insightful look at the roots of racial discrimination of the United States. Jettisoned by the Kerner Commission for something less radical, this eye-opening analysis still speaks volumes in our current age.” —Julian E. Zelizer, Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs, Princeton University, and CNN Political Analyst Psychologist Robert Shellow was Research Director for the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. He later directed a pilot police program for the Washington, DC, Department of Public Safety and taught at Carnegie Mellon University, before starting his own consulting business.

A sweeping history of the Latino experience in the United States. The first new edition in ten years of this important study of Latinos in U.S. history, Harvest of Empire spans five centuries—from the European colonization of the Americas to through the 2020 election. Latinos are now the largest minority group in the United States, and their impact on American culture and politics is greater than ever. With family portraits of real-life immigrant Latino pioneers, as well as accounts of the events and conditions that compelled them to leave their homelands, Gonzalez highlights the complexity of a segment of the American population that is often discussed but frequently misrepresented. This landmark history is required reading for anyone wishing to understand the history and legacy of this influential and diverse group.

When a class-action lawsuit against the US government results in a billion dollar settlement for the aggrieved parties, you’d expect the story to be headline news . . .to be posted on social media everywhere . . . to be adapted to film or even to a popular legal procedural series on TV . . . So why then have so many people never heard of Pigford vs. Glickman? Or the follow-up lawsuit, Pigford II? Or the Black Farmers Case, as the pair of these legal actions is often called? Could it be that the heart-wrenching story of Black farmers in America, and the monumental legal case that brought long-sought justice to them, is rarely told because it reflects so poorly on the US and its treatment of those whose ancestors helped make the nation an agricultural giant in the first place? Whatever the reason, the time to tell the full story has come and the person to share the gripping details is Greg Francis, one of the lead counsels in the historic case that finally helped Black farmers achieve equity. In Just Harvest, Francis narrates the dramatic twists and turns of the legal battle fought and won, and evidences the many years of ingrained discrimination and racism that preceded it. Awareness of this story makes us all witnesses to the history still unfolding— and while parts of what is recounted herein will enrage you, the hope is that this book will also inspire, inform, and motivate you to join the continuing fight for the rights of all Black farmers now and in the future.

A Japanese-American farmer recounts the challenges of taking over and renewing his family's farm in Del Rey, California, describing the pains and pleasures of farm work, and the perseverance of his grandmother.

Presenting authentic Native American cuisine, award-winning chef Beverly Cox presents a delicious array of wholesome recipes. With an updated resources listing, this book is key for anyone wishing to work with ingredients native to the land.