A Golden Weed: Tobacco and Environment in the Piedmont South

An exploration of the rise of the crop strain that came to dominate the American tobacco industry and its toll on the Southern landscape that produced it

Drew A. Swanson has written an “environmental” history about a crop of great historical and economic significance: American tobacco. A preferred agricultural product for much of the South, the tobacco plant would ultimately degrade the land that nurtured it, but as the author provocatively argues, the choice of crop initially made perfect ...