"Rooted in a fruitful history, this manifesto for the next food revolution by acclaimed environmental historian Kate Brown speaks to nature lovers, food activists, social justice warriors, urban planners, WOOFers, and Idealists of all varieties. Is a trip to the farmers market nearly a religious ritual for you? Do you love composting? This rich and fascinating history justifies your passions. Beginning in the 17th century, British peasants lost the commons from which they had fed themselves for generations when capitalists frowned on self-provisioning in order to encourage wage labor. But small-scale gardeners in Paris, Berlin, London and elsewhere fought back, building topsoil in the city with composted garbage and other animal and human waste. They created the most productive, sustainable agriculture in recorded human history, growing local, diverse, organic food on marginal land without burning fossil fuels, creating ecologically and socially diverse networks of flora, fauna, and people. In Nazi Berlin, working-class gardeners harbored dissidents ands Jews throughout the war. On the fringes of Washington, DC, Black Southern migrants built communities around gardens and orchards, the produce funding home-ownership. Behind the Iron Curtain, Soviet and post-Soviet garden allotments prevented a recurrence of mass famine.

In post-war America, suburban lawns took on a totalitarian character: gardeners, particularly gardeners of color, fined and harangued for defying the flat green conformity of turf. Yet the creativity of gardeners inspires hope in the 21st century; in rust-belt Mansfield, OH, helping prisoners to imagine fruitful lives. in the sinking, nitrogen-soaked Netherlands, dependent on industrial food, a progressive movement for community gardens and food forests provide an inspiring vision of a vastly more sustainable future. Down to earth gardeners, working with each other and with nature, have reaped abundant harvests while fostering mutual aid and political engagement. Grafting contemporary experience and concerns onto every historical chapter, Kate Brown creates a mesmerizing hybrid of archival historical research (about half or two-thirds of the book) and contemporary personal interviews and experience, resulting in an eloquent narrative deeply rooted in history, full of colorful stories delivering eye-opening information. The food-industrial complex is the primary contributor to climate change. Call it a utopian dream, but urban gardening offers much-needed hope"-- Provided by publisher.