Much as curators and University scholars follow differing trajectories here in the United Kingdom, for our American counterparts, public history has developed powerfully and in parallel with its academic counterpart. This is a book that bridges these different spheres successfully and in so doing offers a subtle commentary on the importance of placing critical thinking and historical method at the heart of public interpretation and understanding. Agriculture, as Reid and her fellow authors so eloquently articulate, was once omnipresent and obvious. It has slipped out of our common lexicon and become the province of a specialized few. Like the warts and all storytelling of Wilder’s Farmer Boy, complete with its own situated and inherent bias and bigotry, Interpreting Agriculture is a subtle manifesto for the power of things now forgotten, for the durability of evidence of the once pervasive character of farming culture and life, for its potent nostalgic value, and for the myriad different ways that such heritage might be mobilized to address issues in the present-day. This is a volume that sets up a whole series of enormous questions and challenges that we must all face up to, most notably concerning the legacies of colonialism, land grabbing, a disenfranchised labour force, and the rise and impact of agribusiness. I only hope that Reid and her peers are working on a follow-up volume that sets ‘plow’ against ‘plough’ and situates some of these complex debates on a wider international stage. Also, I can now finish reading Farmer Boy with a far clearer, richer, and more specific contextual understanding of these agricultural pasts and of what value they may hold for me, for my son, and for future generations.

中文翻译：

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地球：非工业农业的动力：8,000年的韧性和创新能力，共三册

与英国的策展人和大学学者遵循不同的轨迹一样，对于我们的美国同行来说，公共历史与学术同行一样蓬勃发展。这是一本书，成功地弥合了这些不同的领域，并在此过程中对将批判性思维和历史方法置于公众解释和理解的中心的重要性提供了精妙的评论。正如里德（Reid）及其同事们雄辩地表述的那样，农业曾经无处不在且显而易见。它从我们的通用词典中溜走了，成为少数专业人士的省。就像怀尔德的农夫男孩的疣和所有故事一样，加上其自身的处境和固有的偏见和偏执，对农业的解释是对如今已被遗忘的事物的力量的微妙宣言，证明农业文化和生活曾经具有普遍特征的持久性，强大的怀旧价值以及动员这种遗产解决当今问题的方式多种多样。这本书提出了一系列我们必须面对的一系列巨大的问题和挑战，特别是有关殖民主义的遗产，土地掠夺，劳动力被剥夺权利以及农业综合企业的兴起和影响。我只希望里德（Reid）和她的同伴正在研究后续工作，使“犁”与“犁”相对立，并将其中一些复杂的辩论置于更广阔的国际舞台上。另外，我现在可以通过对这些农业历史以及它们对我儿子的价值的更清晰，更丰富，更具体的背景理解来完成《农夫男孩》的阅读。