Pharsalia: An Environmental Biography of a Southern Plantation, 1780-1880 (Environmental History and the American South)
"Lynn Nelson has given us a wonderful case study of southern agricultural practices during the nineteenth century. His 'biography' of Pharsalia, a plantation in upland Virginia, is in every sense a life story not only of planters and slaves but also of the crops, weeds, livestock, and other organisms that inhabited the land for nearly a hundred years. Exhaustively researched and quietly provocative, this important book should find a wide audience among scholars interested in the South, the environment, agriculture, or antebellum slavery."--Timothy Silver, author ofA New Face on the Countryside: Indians, Colonists, and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests, 1500-1900