Mark Wetherington's entry in the Rowman and Littlefield American Ways series joins a growing list of titles by acknowledged experts introducing students and general readers to critical topics in American history that impinge on current issues of our day. That agriculture has been included alongside treatments of such high-visibility issues as racism, immigration, the radical Right, and environmental activism speaks volumes about the importance attached to farming and food by a broad swath of American society.Wetherington takes a comprehensive approach, tracing developments in American agriculture from the origins of Indigenous farming systems through twenty-first-century agricultural structures and their implications for the future. He unifies this long chronological sweep using the tripartite theme of “control, consolidation, and chemicals” to characterize the processes that have led to the current structure of American agriculture—the farm families to agribusiness transition described in the book's title.