From My Experience: The Pleasures and Miseries of Life on a Farm

by Louis Bromfield, Janet Flanner (Genet)

From My Experience is full of stimulating ideas, fascinating for anyone who understands or wishes to understand something of land and people and animals and plants--their relations to economics, science, and the vast scheme of life itself. But it catches one's attention in a different way and draws one back to read it, searchingly, again and again. For in it, cleanly and powerfully concentrated, is the story of a man's search for the meaning of living.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

324 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Louis Bromfield was an American author and conservationist who gained international recognition winning the Pulitzer Prize and pioneering innovative scientific farming concepts.

Bromfield studied agriculture at Cornell University from 1914 to 1916,[1] but transferred to Columbia University to study journalism. While at Columbia University, Louis Bromfield was initiated into the fraternal organization Phi Delta Theta. His time at Columbia would be short lived and he left after less than a year to go to war. After serving with the American Field Service in World War I and being awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor, he returned to New York City and found work as a reporter. In 1924, his first novel, The Green Bay Tree, won instant acclaim. He won the 1927 Pulitzer Prize for best novel for Early Autumn. All of his 30 books were best-sellers, and many, such as The Rains Came and Mrs. Parkington, were made into successful motion pictures.

photograph by: Carl Van Vechten

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun read about Louis Bromfield's time on a midwestern farm, many of whom were people of eastern european descent, their trials with the farming practice at that time and some new technologies that came upon the post-war farm world at that time.

[Wendy Knight · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite as entertaining as Pleasant Valley, but filled with a lot of information on farming.