John Fraser Hart is one of America’s best known geographers and his prolific writings about the land and its variegated character are elegant and informed. In A Love of the Land, geographer John C. Hudson has gathered a collection of Hart’s seminal essays from the last fifty years, which have received wide literary and scholarly acclaim.The thirteen essays collected in this volume reveal the rich breadth of Hart’s work. In these pieces, Hart meditates on the meaning of geographical study, suburban sprawl, the contemporary uses of land and space, and changes wrought on rural landscapes by the modernization of farms and the growth of industrial agriculture. Whether sheep farming in the British moorlands, the history of the Cotton Belt in the American South, or the industrialization of livestock production, Hart vividly narrates the age-old story of humans and their deep ties to the land, as he deftly blends facts and analysis with engaging anecdotes of his and others’ experiences. A Love of the Land will be essential reading not only for geography students and scholars but also for those interested in how geography and place impacts our lives.
