Cresheim Farm - 400 Years of History at an American Farm (Paperback)

The book is a work of political archaeology: it focuses on the people and events at a particular colonial farm in Germantown, Pennsylvania. The peoples' and farm's stories provide a micro and macro view of economic, social, demographic, and agro-ecological change. Cresheim Farm shows how one mostly unknown but strategically placed piece of land - home to an extraordinary array of people, including anti-slavery and anti-Nazi activists, the first woman editor of the Saturday Evening Post and a robber baron - can tell, affect and reflect the history of a nation. The writing is historically grounded and academic, future-oriented, deeply researched, and immediate. Cresheim Farm serves as a lens through which to observe and magnify social forces, such as the launching point of freedom and democracy movements, white privilege, slavery, and genocidal westward expansion. The past lives on in all of us.