The Planter of Modern Life: Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution

by Stephen Heyman

How a leading writer of the Lost Generation became America’s most famous farmer and inspired the organic food movement.

Louis Bromfield was a World War I ambulance driver, a Paris expat, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist as famous in the 1920s as Hemingway or Fitzgerald. But he cashed in his literary success to finance a wild agrarian dream in his native Ohio. The ideas he planted at his utopian experimental farm, Malabar, would inspire America’s first generation of organic farmers and popularize the tenets of environmentalism years before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

A lanky Midwestern farm boy dressed up like a Left Bank bohemian, Bromfield stood out in literary Paris for his lavish hospitality and his green thumb. He built a magnificent garden outside the city where he entertained aristocrats, movie stars, flower breeders and writers of all stripes. Gertrude Stein enjoyed his food, Edith Wharton admired his roses, Ernest Hemingway boiled with jealousy over his critical acclaim. Millions savored his novels, which were turned into Broadway plays and Hollywood blockbusters, yet Bromfield’s greatest passion was the soil.

In 1938, Bromfield returned to Ohio to transform 600 badly eroded acres into a thriving cooperative farm. From his rural seat, he launched a national crusade to improve America’s relationship with the land. He sounded one of the earliest alarms about pesticides like DDT and turned Malabar Farm into a mecca for agricultural pioneers and a country retreat for celebrities like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (who were married there in 1945).

This sweeping biography unearths a lost icon of American culture, a fascinating, hilarious and unclassifiable character who — between writing and plowing — also dabbled in politics and high society. Through it all, Bromfield fought for an agriculture that would enrich the soil and protect the planet. And while his name has faded into obscurity, his mission seems more critical today than ever before.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Food, Nature, History, Biography Memoir, Environment

352 pages, Hardcover

First published April 14, 2020

About the author

Stephen Heyman, a former editor at T: The New York Times Style Magazine, has written for the Times, Slate, Vogue, and many other publications. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Leon Levy Center for Biography and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Reviews

[Jeanine Malarsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could write a book on my reactions to reading The Planter of Modern Life: Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution, because Louis Bromfield is a small part of my personal life. In the mid-fifties my family moved to Malabar Farm from Mississippi; my father had been hired to manage the showcase dairy. Prior to and following those “halcyon” years, Louis Bromfield was part of the family conversation, so my personal interest in his story was part of growing up. I still have gifts he brought back from Paris – every child of each farm family received a personal gift for Christmas at the Big House.
Heyman’s book is superb. His writing is meticulous, precise and professional. His research is amazing. He skillfully weaves snippets of letters, books, and other documents together in a masterful narrative answering questions I didn’t know I had about Bromfield’s life. Even though I did know him (as a child), and have read his books, and revisited Malabar Farm numerous times throughout my adulthood, there was much I didn’t know.
I knew he was a famous author. I knew he was a member of the Hollywood glitterati. I’d read his daughter Ellen Geld’s book and I knew his status as a cutting-edge conservationist. But, until I read Stephen Heyman’s book, I had no true perspective on the man and his achievements. Well done!

[Heather Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to W. W. Norton for giving me a free digital galley of this book in exchange for feedback.

According to the beginning of this biography, Louis Bromfield is mostly unknown outside of northeast Ohio. Well, I'm from northeast Ohio, and I knew exactly who he was when I picked up this book - at least, I thought I did.

I knew that Bromfield was a massively popular, bestselling writer, whose books are now mostly out of print and largely forgotten. I knew that he used his fortune to buy Malabar Farm, a spot in Lucas, Ohio, which I know as a state park that's a nice place to take a hike or meet a friendly farm animal, with a beautiful house that I toured once and have not forgotten.

I was worried it would be boring, since agricultural reform and the minor starlets of the 1930s aren't particular interests of mine, but I wanted to learn about my once-famous neighbor, and so I gave it a try. I'm glad I did, because it was not boring AT ALL, but engaging and fascinating even in the sections that are about agriculture.

The part I connected with most strongly was Bromfield's years in France, socializing with Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald and watching, horrified, at the rise of fascism, a bunch of ludicrous caricatures improbably and inexorably rising to power. Something about that seemed upsettingly familiar in a way that made me feel deeply connected to the distressed artists.

I was fascinated to learn that Bromfield's work inspired Wendell Berry, a writer whose work I couldn't have connected to my adolescent walks at Malabar, but now that I know more about Bromfield, it seems obvious.

This book seems destined to be the biggest bestseller in the gift shop at Malabar Farm, but it's well worth reading even for people who don't live near the farm, because it's the story of a fascinating person who shouldn't be forgotten, even though his writing is out of style and the park that was once his home is in a somewhat obscure corner of Ohio.

[Liv · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a well-written book that explores (albeit lightly) the influence of agriculture in Louis Bromfield's life and the subsequent influence he had on agricultural development.

I enjoyed the exploration, but felt like we really did not get to truly see the overall impact of his life (in which Bromfield's friendships and life in Europe are detailed extensively) until the last third or fourth of the novel. Seeing as this book meant to focus on Bromfield and his relationship to a food revolution I would have liked a more in-depth look at this... Rather than the background behind many of his novels and relationships. While these were an important part of Bromfield's life, throughout much of the book it felt as though these were the focus of the novel with the food revolution being the side theme.

That being said, it was fun to read and definitely gave me some backstory to much of the time leading up to and during the third agricultural revolution. Read if you a) enjoy Bromfield, b) want to read about an elite novelist and his return to his roots, c) have an interest in a subjective background on the influence of Bromfield on agriculture.

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this account of Louis Bromfield, an author and organic farm advocate I had never heard of before. Talk about a man of many passions with friends in high places! To think Louis won a Pulitzer prize and had several movies made from his books is fascinating considering none of that is really remembered anymore. If anything, it shows how history is fickle and ever-changing in what is important. My favorite parts were about the farming done in France and Ohio. I love the whole premise of the organic movement and think he was a man who was needed in his generation and is needed even more in ours. I appreciated knowing about his techniques to restore his land. The people who read him and followed in his footsteps have done amazing things with the stewardship of the earth in their particular spheres. My budding 8-year-old soil conservationist now wants to try reading the book! I would love to see a Young Readers edition come out with the swankier parts of Louis's life omitted and just focus on what amazing things he did for conservation and restoration of the land as well as the treatment of his animals. Stephen Heyman is a wonderful and thorough biographer. I would like to read more of his work.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: A biography of novelist, screenwriter, and sustainable farming pioneer Louis Bromfield.

This happened to be a serendipitous find as I was shopping at an online book site. I was unaware of this recently released biography of Louis Bromfield. I will forgive you if you are wondering Louis who? Stephen Heyman, his biographer, acknowledges that this is not an uncommon reaction:

If Bromfield ever appears in a book today, he is shoved into parentheses or buried without ceremony in a footnote. If we remember him at all, it is only as a character in somebody else’s story. As Humphrey Bogart’s best man, say, or Doris Duke’s lover. As Gertrude Stein’s protege or Edith Wharton’s gardening guru. As Ernest Hemingway’s enemy or Eleanor Roosevelt’s pain in the ass. What is surprising is not that he has his own story to tell, but that, six decades after his death, that story suddenly feels important (pp. 2-3).

Louis Bromfield’s life began and ended in the Mansfield, Ohio area, and so he is well-familiar to this lover of all things Ohio. I’ve toured Malabar Farm and the Big House where Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were married. I’ve learned about his farming ideas and even camped at the farm with my son’s Boy Scout troop (a story in itself!). I’ve read some of his farm writings, Pleasant Valley and Malabar Farm. Much of what Heyman mentions in the quote above had nothing or little to do with this part of Bromfield’s life.

It turns out that this part of the story of Bromfield is what Heyman believes to be important in our day. He does not rush to make this point but sets what he thinks Bromfield’s most significant contribution in the context of his whole life. He renders the story in two parts. The first centered around Paris, his very successful novels, the Lost Generation set of which he was part, and his gardens at Senlis. The second focused around his childhood home of Mansfield, and Malabar Farm in Pleasant Valley, where his work and revolutionary thinking about the soil and farming practices began a movement that continues to this day.

The first part picks up with his ambulance corps work during World War I where his love of France was born. After a few years back in New York working in the publishing trade, he published his own first works, to immediate success. Both The Green Bay Tree and Possession featured strong, modern, American women. And he married Mary, the antithesis of these women. Heyman traces his longing to return to France, realized in 1925. He fell in with the literary set, befriended by Gertrude Stein while Hemingway resented his success, including his Pulitzer Prize. Even amid the success, the glitter, and the parties, Bromfield loved the soil, creating a beautiful garden home along a stream in Senlis, which became a gathering place for his friends, including Edith Wharton, a fellow gardener. We also learn about the beginnings of his association with George Hawkins, his personal secretary, discretely gay, and responsible for at least some of his success in Hollywood.

With the rise of Nazism, the response of appeasement, and increasing longings for home, Bromfield organized a rescue and repatriation effort for the American Lincoln Brigade, fighting in Spain. Through his connections, he mobilized the means to get over one thousand sent home, winning the French Legion of Honor. But Munich closed the door on Europe, and in 1938, he moved back to the States.

The second half of the book describes his purchase of a worn out farm in the Pleasant Valley area outside Mansfield, and his work with agricultural efforts to restore the farm through green crops, contour plowing, and limited use of fertilizers and chemical interventions, crop rotation, and shunning the monocultural farming of so much of Ohio. I learned that he was one of the first to sound the alarm as to the dangers of DDT. Heyman captures the sheer joy Bromfield derived from this work in his chapter “Four Seasons at Malabar.” He offers a nuanced treatment of these years, highlighting the reality that Bromfield’s Hollywood earnings sustained the farm–and really didn’t do that, especially after Hawkins death. He was controlling and didn’t let his two daughters, who loved farming, take a share in the work. They and their husbands went elsewhere, Ellen to Brazil, where she and her husband far more successfully realized Bromfield’s vision.

While Bromfield’s own careless business practices, mistaken ideas, and endless experiments led to mounting debts, his books and lecturing inspired future generations of agricultural writers, and the organic food movement, all of which have challenged America’s business-agricultural complex. Heyman traces the lineage of writers and activists influenced by him including Wendell Berry and Robert Rodale, founder of Organic Gardening magazine and the organic food movement.

Heyman captures Bromfield’s essential message, that ‘{m}ost of our citizens do not realize what is going on under their very feet.’ Bromfield recognized the danger of not caring for the top soil, one of America’s great assets and that chemical fertilizers could never substitute for good soil management. Perhaps the time in France and seeing farms that had been owned for generations had something to do with it.

I welcome this work. Perhaps it is just Ohio pride, but I do believe Bromfield deserves to be better known as an important influence on our contemporary movement for sustainable agriculture and healthy food. His other writing work is another matter and I suspect the author’s inferences to its lack of enduring value are on the mark, though I still want to read more Bromfield. Bromfield was one of the first to practice and preach good soil management, testify before Congress on the dangers of pesticides, and attempt to return to sustainable practices. He also left a tangible monument to his work in Malabar Farm, a working farm where people can learn about his ideas and tour the Big House. The farm doesn’t fully realize his dream of a research center nor display all his farming practices, given its tourism focus as a state park, but one can learn about his life, and see the land he saw, and perhaps something of his vision, which Heyman captures in his biography.

[Mary Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book about the life of Louis Bromfield whose literary works are mostly disparaged and forgotten today. After living in Paris in the 20’s and 30’s and mingling with all the rich and famous people of that era, he moved back to the US after becoming alarmed by the rise of Hitler and Fascism. Returning to his home state of Ohio he launched Malabar Farms and began another career as an early organic farming pioneer, while continuing to write literary works and farming manuals. Anticipating Rachel Carson he warned about the dangers of chemical pesticides and fertilizers.As a farmer , he influenced a whole generation of organic farmers including Wendell Berry. Largely forgotten today, this book admirably resurrects his life and work.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, this surprised me. I expected it to be just about Louis Bromfield but it was about so much more...more than just Malabar, too. I respect Bromfield’s expansive vision, but I don’t believe he would have been my friend. He was fascinating and appalling at the same time. The author, Stephen Heyman, writes about everything from Westward expansion in the U.S. to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, both World War I and II, from farming and soil conservation to environmentalism (before Silent Spring). And, now, having read The Planter or Modern Life I know why Ohio has all that invasive multiflora rose and butterbur.

[Courtney Llewellyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting read for me. I had never heard of Louis Bromfield before this book, and the author's blend of personal biography and ag history worked together really well. Almost two decades before Rachel Carson, there was Louis Bromfield, and I think that's good to know.

[Mary Elizabeth Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A case study in well-written nonfiction. Beautifully and compellingly told, this unfortunately had the affect of telling me I SHOULD figure out how to buy a stretch of land and do something restorative with it.

You really can't beat the glimpses into the silly opinions about flora and fauna of some of the Western world's most interesting writers.

[Katharine Ott · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Planter of Modern Life" - written by Stephen Heyman and published in 2020 by W W Norton & Company. We are aware of Malabar Farm near Mansfield, Ohio, having toured the house and enjoyed several nice meals at the Inn over the years. I was astonished at the full life Bromfield led both before and during his time at the Farm which he established in 1939, building a 19-room, 6-bath house named after a district in Bombay, India that he had visited. He was a popular fiction writer, sometimes eclipsing acquaintance Ernest Hemingway in sales, but his main focus was environmental activism and he entered the fray with very strong opinions. Malabar Farm was to showcase Bromfield's vision of healthier agriculture. In addition to this being a fascinating biography, it's also a history lesson on the first part of the 20th century. Recommended!

[Dave Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someitimes you end up reading a book and you have no idea really how you came across it or why you started reading it. But you're here, you're reading, so might as well see where this goes.

I had no idea who Bromfield was, and even less of an idea of how he helped transform modern life. Floating between France and America and beyond (a particularly memorable foray through India), Bromfield's story brings to light the interconnedted relationship between our relationship to the earth (and our tilling of it and our dependency on it) and our relationship to progress (our control over the earth and our manipulation of it for mass porduction and convenience). As industrialization begins to emerge, these two things will end up forever held in tension and conflict.

It is through Bromfield's writing actually, as his writing captures the beauty of this relationship between humans and the earth, that we can preserve this important transtion in terms of modernity. A part of the fun of The Planter of Modern Life is seeing Bromfield interacting with other famous and familiar authors at different points in his journey. You can really see the importance of literature, and art in general, in terms of helping us to make sense of these important transitions. And the telling of Bromfield's life is turned into a kind of prose all its own. Very beautifully written even as it cuts through its own romanticism to say something important about this transition towards modern life.

One part that I was especially interested in was the story within the story of this transition to modernity, where we watch as the shift to industrialism essentially creates the organic movement overnight. It's fascinating to see how the organic and natural movement today has its roots in this moment in time, and even more fascinating to understand it fromt he perspective of Bromfield's story. It just highlights how much of it is built on irrational assumpitons and convictions that has far more to do with what it is protesting than it does with what it is progressing. The whole movement has its roots in the shortage of fertilizer in increasing population and migration to cities. It is when they found a way to make "artificial" fertilizer, which is not so much artificial as it is mass produced, industrialization was able to take off, and as with everything else the food industry was transformed over night. And those resisting it created the organic movement in protest of this industrialization.

It's also revealing to note how intimately connected the organic movement was to spirituality. Today it has grown definitively into a counter spiritually driven lifestyle that continues to protest the demons of industrialization and modernization, and this is done so whether one is actually "spiritual" in the religious sense or not. It's almost like it is a religion, and you can see how it is often irrationally used to coopt the very idealism that industrialization made possible- longer lives. The health food or natural foods industry has become a profroundly lucrative and money making industry in its own right based not on actual truths, but on the reactiveness that has its roots in this point of history. It's not so much that industrialization has created artificial foods and lifestyles that are slowly (or quickly) killing us. That belief system has just been coopted, sold and assumed by the organic and all natural crowd. And in truth, the falsehoods that drive that industry and the beliefs people hold about what that industy represents (and yes, it is an industry whether we want to admit it or not) are endless. Theories about a million and one things all driven by this one thing... What is really behind it is this sense of disallusionent with the way industrialization has transformed modern life. What this whole war between lifestyles represents is an uneasiness with what we don't understand and what we don't feel in control over. And yet at the same time, the only reason we have the priviliege of waging these wars between mass production and the lucrative and expensive organic/all natural lifestyle is because of industrialization. It just shows how irrationial all of this can become.

And yet, when you uncover the roots and understand the story, something is able to emerge from the muddied mess. There is something about knowing the why that helps to speak to the uncertainty, and Bromfield's life, writing, and this book's own prose can help give it some meaning, regardelss of which side of the lifestyle war we find ourselves on.

[Dylan Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tight book. Incredibly well researched biography of a virtually forgotten member of the "Lost Generation" of writers and artists, who risked his reputation to build his legacy in the rural farmlands of Ohio

[Debbie Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was born in Mansfield, Ohio and often visited Malabar Farm in Lucas so I found this to be a fascinating biography of Louis Bromfield. Stephen Heyman does an admirable job of connecting readers to Bromfield's life. His popularity as a writer and his fade into literary oblivion are adequately addressed, but the author finds a new, refreshing way to put Bromfield's life in perspective as a pioneer in the early environmental and organic food movement. There is much to ponder in this biography, particularly when measuring success. I listened to this book on audible.com and found the narrator to be quite engaging.

[KathyNV · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Planter of Modern Life” is an incredibly well researched biography of Louis Bromfield, writer and gardener a man born ahead of his time. He rubbed shoulders with presidents, royalty, movie stars, authors, farmers and gardeners. The anecdotes Stephen Heyman places throughout the book provide a fascinating glimpse into his outspoken manner, hospitality and family life. His firm unwavering beliefs helped spread his radical ideas on farming and a deep love of the land and its inhabitants from bees to cattle and the food we all eat. He brought to the forefront the ideas of soil conservation, crop rotation and the effects of reckless agricultural practices on wildlife, crops and disease. Anyone who loves to garden, farms or even cooks and is concerned about what they eat, both animal and plant and how it is raised and nurtured will enjoy this wonderful glimpse into the fascinating life of an American environmentalist. Thank you to WW Norton and Goodreads for the privilege of reading this wonderful biography!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book! The title and subtitle made me worried that the book would either be dull or overblown, but in fact it is neither. (I feel a little better about my own struggles in helping to title books now.)

In fact, the book is both a excellent biography of Louis Bromfield, and a fascinating look at his attempts to change agriculture. I cannot thank the author enough, for both are welcome!

Always sobering to see someone go from trying to explore and enact good ideas and spread the word about them, to becoming convinced that they have all the answers, and the only right answers, and that everyone else must see that or else go astray. This is especially sad when some of the ideas are very important and urgently needed, but get lost due to the ego of the self-appointed messiah. But the early parts of the book are so fun, do read them even if you decide to skip the sad ending.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Couldn't put it down - this biography of an author farmer I'd never heard of, who was a massive influence to both popular literature in the 20s and agriculture later - certainly two of my interests.
The first section about his war exploits and literary career was fantastic and amazingly detailed. Reads almost like historical fiction, but it's true. The second section about agricultural history in the US takes a bit of a broader view but it still quite good. Unfortunately the end comes up quick, and the chapter on his demise and death seems rushed. Perhaps I need to look up some of his daughter's writings to fill in the story there.
This was a fun read, if nothing because it's main character is quite a character. Not quite a hero, but certainly an interest.

[Jmoore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to recommend this book. It’s not a fast page turner or the kind of book you just can’t put down. But, I got to say I have been pretty obsessed with Mr Bromfield. After I read this book about him I read three of his most popular books. Me and Bromfield have been hanging out together for most of the month.

Not only was he a prolific writer who’s books during his time were more popular then Hemingway and Fitzgerald but he is also know as the Father of Organic Farming. He had a farm which reminded me very much of the movie
“The Biggest Little Farm” you all suggested.

It’s been a fun journey about a fascinating man and his life that I had never heard a thing about.

[Dee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is different from many of the normal genres, but it is oh so interesting. Wether we realize it or not, we are all part of the environment. This book is a great reference and is not meant to be skimmed. Even if you are not use to this type of book, you will be glad you picked it up.

[Vahue23 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book! Louis Bromfiled was a complex, mulit-talented man whose impact on the first half of the 20th century cannot be underestimated. A writer of novels, non-fiction, movies and a slew of public articles and essays, LB is ready to be re-discovered.

[Susan Beecher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting biography of Louis Bromfield and his influence on sustainable farming. He led a very interesting life as an author who left the US for Paris along with others of his generation, like Gertrude Stein, etc. He was friends with most of these people. Recommend.

[Judith Kerr · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a grand record of Louis Bromfield`s wonderful life!! Been a fan ever since visiting Malabar Farm years ago. If only more farmers would read this...

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book bills itself as NOT a biography of a literary figure--right in the intro. But then it goes on for 2/3 of the book describing him being literary and schmoozing with literary greats, giving his focus on plants only a passing glance. The book either should have been honest about what it was or provided only the necessary backstory before launching into the "food revolution" part of Bromfield's life--I've stopped reading before even getting to that part.

Furthermore, I was exhausted by the references to Hemingway and his misogyny and didn't understand why he was included at all. Sure, he was a part of Bromfield's circle, but the discussion about all the women he hated and in what specific ways is just tiresome. The guy was an asshole. Let's confine him to the annals of history, be collectively ashamed he's ever been a literary role model or considered the pinnacle of masculinity, and stop giving him any attention.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe the most niche Ohio/literary/agrarian book I’ll ever read? But just a few weeks after a trip to Malabar Farm, this was absolutely the right book to fill in what I didn’t know I needed to know about Louis Bromfield.

[Ken Hoffner · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are interested in the history of the environmental movement, “The Planter of Modern Life: Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution” is a book that you will enjoy. A contemporary of authors F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway, author Louis Bromfield was a well-known figure in American literature whose books such as “The Rains Came” were also made into blockbuster movies. From humble beginnings on a farm in Ohio, Bromfield became one of the Lost Generation's most commercially successful writers.

While living in France in the period between the two world wars, Bromfield bought a house and land in Senlis, north of Paris, and created a petit garden of Eden with the help of the French gardeners he hired. Garden parties in his floral oasis became a regular event for the who's who of Paris at that time, and Bromfield marveled at the abundance of flowers, vegetables, and fruits that could be lavishly grown on a piece of property that had been farmed for generations, all because of the care given to the soil. The bucolic experience would change the course of his life.

The party was over for American expats in Paris when Hitler's war machine started rumbling through Europe, so Bromfield returned to the US with his family in 1938. Bromfield wanted to re-create his French gardening successes in the US, and bought a run-down and eroded farm in his boyhood state of Ohio. He named the farm Malabar after an area he had visited in Bombay where bodies were burned after death and their ashes returned to the earth.

Bromfield began a sustained effort at Malabar to restore life to the depleted soils through the use of contour plowing the hills, winter cover plants, using nitrogen-fixing plants, crop rotation, erosion control, and adding limestone, manure, and phosphorus to the soil. In short, he became a true “soil conservationist,” and the farm became a working model of how to care for the land. His farm was visited by thousands, including many Hollywood stars he had befriended through the production of movies that were based on his books. His work and advocacy in using natural or organic means to grow things, and his opposition to the nascent and chemical dependent “industrial farming” set the stage for other pioneers in the environmental movement such as Rachel Carson.

The author doesn't spend a lot of time on the organic versus industrial farming issue, other than to point to Bromfield as a pioneer in soil conservation and caring for the environment. There's lots more in the book of interest like politics, dysfunctional family dynamics, and Doris Duke, and you can even learn how Bromfield's work continues to this day in Brazil at the Fazenda Pau de Alho through the work of his late daughter, and now his grandchildren.

I enjoyed reading this book that connects ideas and people from the past to the present, and give it four stars.

[Chase Eyster · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this well-paced read about the interesting life and times of Pulitzer Prize winning author Louis Bromfield. A prolific writer from the 1920s through the 1950s, Bromfield’s literary legacy has waned over the years but his personal story is truly fascinating.

Stephen Heyman brings Bromfield’s passion for both writing and agriculture to life in this biography. His clean, crisp writing style helps the story flow from Ohio to Europe and back again while keeping the reader engaged throughout. An ambulance driver in World War I, Bromfield’s post-war years in France are detailed as literary luminaries such as Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and other notable contemporaries move in and out of the expat part of the tale.

As World War II approaches Bromfield relocates his family to a downtrodden farm near his hometown of Mansfield, Ohio. The Malabar Farm experiment is bold, financially risky, and a source of great pleasure and pain for the famous author. He becomes the voice of the war time farmer, a host to thousands of curious visitors, and an internationally recognized proponent for sustainable agricultural methods. Come to Malabar for the many interesting stories on livestock and crops and stay for the wedding of Bogey and Bacall!

Heyman keeps the reader engaged and entertained throughout this wonderful narrative. Bromfield experienced all of the emotional and financial ups and downs of the mid-20th century American agriculturalist as he poured his heart and fortune into his passion project. It’s truly a great story and well worth your time and consideration.

[Pascale · Rating 5 out of 5]

A model of the genre. Heyman does a great job of showing what a complex and flawed man Bromfield was without being snide or condescending. Yes, Bromfield was a functioning alcoholic, like most writers, celebrities and socialites of his generation. Yes, he was self-aggrandizing, and took many liberties with the truth throughout his life. Yes, although he loved his daughters and his farm to bits, he spent most of his time elsewhere, hobnobbing with famous people while his wife milked the cows. Yes, the quality of his books steadily declined over the years, and even his best hardly hold up today. Yes, Malabar never generated a profit, in spite of the skill and dedication of his manager Max Drake, who had to go behind his boss's back to get the venture started properly, with help from New Deal agencies. A superb host, a great showman, a good friend to many eclectic people (Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, Edna Ferber, Humphrey Bogart as well as legions of anonymous or forgotten people), he was at heart a restless loner who was probably closer to his dog than to any human. For all his bluster and his mistakes, he could make a very shrewd assessment of people and situations, and took the right stance early on about Hitler, Neville Chamberlain and Charles de Gaulle. Above all, his advocacy of a non-radical form of organic farming makes him a true visionary. A tireless supporter of many worthwhile causes, his main claim to fame from today's standpoint is as an early whistle-blower of unsustainable farming practices. Heyman's prose is a delight and I cannot comprehend why this book didn't come to my attention the minute it was released last year.

[lisa giesecke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not for everyone but I really enjoyed reading it. Louis Bromfield was the creator of Malibar Farm in Ohio. I traveled there many years ago to be part of a women's weekend and stay at the hostel that was part of the Hostelling International network. I have no idea if it is still there. While I was there we had a tour of the Big House, gathered eggs, and explored the farm. I do remember thinking " yeah -so, who was this Bromfield guy? I've never heard of him." So, for me, to learn about the man who dedicated his life to this plot of land was inspiring. Yes, the book, as so many celebrity books, has a lot of name dropping, but, the central idea of what agriculture can be and probably should be in this country can make you think. I appreciate that the author presented Bromfield both in his glory and his mud - His stubborn, almost tyrannical personality that did a lot to push forward the (what's now know as) Organic Way but also the things that didn't work out as planned. I appreciate that there was little sugar coating on Bromfield's liberal turned to conservative politics and troubles with money, family, friends and workers. The author presents a very balanced picture - good and bad - as we all are. But the overwhelming idea that this "farmer" was years ahead of his time is well supported and a very compelling read. Thanks - I learned something this summer!

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few months ago I picked this book up on a lark. So glad I did! I was unfamiliar with Louis Bromfield: he was a pretty famous novelist -- part of the Lost Generation of American ex-pats in Paris in the 1920s. Pals with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Willa Cather, he even won a Pulitzer in 1927 for his third novel.

But he also loved gardening and before WWII he returned to his home state of Ohio and started his own farm and wrote books about agrarian life that would become biblical verse for the organic farming revolution. He was outspoken opponent of DDT a decade before Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" and testified in Congress about soil depletion and erosion .... but he worked in Hollywood too and A-list celebs and politicians would visit his farm -- his pal Humphrey Bogart even married Lauren Bacall in his parlor and they spent their first night as man and wife in his home.

An absolutely fascinating book!

[Debbie Roby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this biography. As a life-long Ohioan, I was familiar with the name Louis Bromfield, and was aware he had written novels many years ago. I also knew he developed Malabar Farm in Richland County, Ohio and was very involved in farming in his latter years. I certainly did not know many of the details about him that this author has presented. Bromfield led a fascinating life! He was an ex-pat in the 1920s in France along with so many American authors and other famous people, who were all his friends. In the 1930s he returned to Ohio with his wife and three daughters, bought the land that he would develop into a marvelous farm, and became a spokesman for organic farming techniques, then almost unheard of in this country. He lived a rich, full life and Heyman has done a terrific job of introducing Bromfield to new generations. Well done!

[Sue Roselle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Louis Brofman grew up on a farm in Ohio which he left to volunteer in WWI. Following the war, he settled in Paris where he began to write. He won the Pulitzer in 1927. Later, he and his wife, Mary, moved to a suburb of Paris where they restored an old monastery and created expansive gardens. His home and gardens were open each weekend to the literati of Paris. With WWII looming, the family, now including two daughters, relocated to Central Ohio onto a farm. Over time, he created the first organic farm in the country. Brilliant. Warned about the dangers of DDT seventeen years prior to the publication of "Silent Spring." Terrific book by Pittsburgh native.