Farm : A Year in the Life of an American Farmer

This book has no scholarly paraphernalia at all a departure for the author of the meticulously researched, Pulitzer Prize-winning history The Making of the atomic bomb . The narrative is based on detailed notes Rhodes kept in 42 special notebooks during a year he spent visiting and working on a family farm in central Missouri. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

YA-- Readers will gain a sound understanding of modern farm life through this actual account of the risks and rewards, the daily duties, and the long-range planning undertaken by Tom and Sally Bauer and their three children on their central Missouri farm. Actual conversations and specific details give documentarylike immediacy as the Bauers confront real problems and work through to solutions. Readers learn of the family's ethnic background and ethical beliefs through their telling comments on nature, creatures, and society within and outside the family. Precise illustrations of equipment and natural scenes validate a modern farm family's existence. --Carolyn Trachta, formerly at Clear Creek High School, League City, TX
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

To write this book, Rhodes, whose The Making of the Atomic Bomb won the NBA, NBCC and Pulitzer prizes, spent almost a year on the family farm in central Missouri owned by the pseudonymous 46-year-old Tom Bauer. Meticulous, exhaustive, at times excessive descriptions illumine the planting and harvesting of corn, soybeans and wheat; the mechanics of farm machinery and finances; hog and cattle breeding and castration; the farmer's battles with government controls, imperatives of grain companies and nature; and farmer camaraderie (mostly male, the female farmer is a rarity in Missouri). Rhodes generally affects the no-nonsense, unadorned tone of the farmers, but his occasional lyricisms are not inappropriate, even when portraying the bustle of a farrowing house, the farm's financial core. "There were pigs everywhere, pigs standing on their mothers' backs, pigs' heads lined up along a row of teats, pigs squealing and scratching, and more to come, into a dimly lit world where the air was mellow night and day with country-Western songs." Readers will not fail to appreciate the monumental achievement of the independent farmer, but they will remain curious about the experiences of the author who masks himself behind a third-person narration. BOMC featured alternate.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.