A Golden Weed: Tobacco and Environment in the Piedmont South

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 agrarian as well as financial sense for southern planters.

Swanson, who brings to his narrative the experience of having grown up on a working Virginia t...