Borsodi, Ralph. Flight from the City:  An Experiment in Creative Living on the Land. New York:  Harper and Brothers, 1933.

A warmly human back-to-the-lander whose pithy critique of industrial civilization still hits home.  Borsodi explains how production of life’s essentials at home with small-scale technology leads to enhanced personal liberty and security.  Homemade is inevitably more efficient, less costly, and better quality than anything mass-produced.  Readers who become fond of this unique individualist’s sociology and political economy will also enjoy Borsodi’s This Ugly Civilization and The Distribution Age.

Brady, Nyle C. The Nature and Properties of Soils, Eighth Edition.  New York:  Macmillan, 1974.

Through numerous editions and still the standard soils text for American agricultural colleges.  Every serious gardener should attempt a reading of this encyclopedia of soil knowledge every few years.  See also Foth, Henry D. Fundamentals of Soil Science.

Bromfield, Louis. Malibar Farm. New York:  Harper & Brothers, 1947.

Here is another agricultural reformer who did not exactly toe the Organic Party line as promulgated by J.l.  Rodale.  Consequently his books are relatively unknown to today’s gardening public.  If you like Wendell Berry you’ll find Bromfield’s emotive and Iyrical prose even finer and less academically contrived.  His experiments with ecological farming are inspiring.  See also Bromfield’s other farming books:  Pleasant Valley, In My Experience, and Out of the Earth.

Carter, Vernon Gill and Dale, Tom. Topsoil and Civilization. Norman:  University of Oklahoma Press, 1974. (first edition, 1954)

This book surveys seven thousand years of world history to show how each place where civilization developed was turned into an impoverished, scantily-inhabited semi-desert by neglecting soil conservation.  Will ours’ survive any better?  Readers who wish to pursue this area further might start with Wes Jackson’s New Roots for Agriculture.

Ernle, (Prothero) Lord. English Farming Past and Present, 6th edition.  First published London:  Longmans, Green & Co., Ltd., 1912, and many subsequent editions.  Chicago:  Quadrangle Books, 1962.

Some history is dry as dust.  Ernle’s writing lives like that of Francis Parkman or Gibbon.  Anyone serious about vegetable gardening will want to know all they can about the development of modern agricultural methods.

Foth, Henry D. Fundamentals of Soil Science, Eighth Edition.  New York:  John Wylie & Sons, 1990.

Like Brady’s text, this one has also been through numerous editions for the past several decades.  Unlike Brady’s work however, this book is a little less technical, an easier read as though designed for non-science majors.  Probably the best starter text for someone who wants to really understand soil.