The Georgia Peach
Culture, Agriculture, and Environment in the American South

This book explores the significance of the peach as a cultural icon and viable commodity in the American South.

William Thomas Okie (Author)

9781107417717, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 March 2018

319 pages, 29 b/w illus.
15 x 23 x 2 cm, 0.5 kg

'The cover of this book makes me want to eat [a peach], and will make many people want to read the book. Covers can and do sell books, and this book should rightfully be judged by its cover: it is an exceptional piece of historical scholarship on so many levels.' Sterling Evans, Enterprise & Society

Imprinted on license plates, plastered on billboards, stamped on the tail side of the state quarter, and inscribed on the state map, the peach is easily Georgia's most visible symbol. Yet Prunus persica itself is surprisingly rare in Georgia, and it has never been central to the southern agricultural economy. Why, then, have southerners - and Georgians in particular - clung to the fruit? The Georgia Peach: Culture, Agriculture, and Environment in the American South shows that the peach emerged as a viable commodity at a moment when the South was desperate for a reputation makeover. This agricultural success made the fruit an enduring cultural icon despite the increasing difficulties of growing it. A delectable contribution to the renaissance in food writing, The Georgia Peach will be of great interest to connoisseurs of food, southern, environmental, rural, and agricultural history.

1. A wilderness of peach trees
2. The baron of pears
3. Elberta, you're a peach
4. A Connecticut Yankee in King Cotton's court
5. Rot and glut
6. Blossoms and hams
7. Under the trees.

Subject Areas: Environmental economics [KCN], History of the Americas [HBJK]