The Planter of Modern Life

Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution

By: Stephen Heyman

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

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. 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, which became a mecca for agricultural pioneers and a country retreat for celebrities.

This sweeping biography unearths a lost icon of American culture, a fascinating, hilarious and unclassifiable character who - between writing and plowing - also dabbled in global politics and high society.

©2020 Stephen Heyman (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

An Amazing Life!

Living near and having visited Malabar several times, this book was fascinating in so many ways. He was so ahead of his time. He lived life to its fullest!

Fascinating

Bromfield was familiar to me as an author, but I had no idea about his activism in the organic farming movement. His idealism is admirable. I wish this country could restore its soil the way he did on his farm. An interesting read and historically fascinating.

Great story, great writing and great narration

I wish Mr Hyman has written more than one book. I bought a few books by Broomfield after reading this biography.
As usual, Robertson Dean is one if my favorite narrators.

From roaring 20s writer to advocate for organic fa

Amazing exploration of a writer and then farmer who helped bring the organic movement into being.

The Planter of Modern Life

Interesting book. Reads a little like a text book. But I really want to go to Malabar Farm now that I know it’s history. Interesting that Bogart and Bacall were married there.