Would you care for a Georgia peach? Historian Thomas Okie asks this question at the beginning of the introduction and at the end of the conclusion to this book on the agricultural, environmental, economic, and social history of the American South. Well, yes, I would—it is my favorite fruit! In fact, the cover of this book makes me want to eat one even more, and will make many people excited to read the book. Covers (and I congratulate Cambridge University Press for developing one of the most beautiful covers I have seen in a long time) 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.

Georgia Peach situates the development of peach orchard agriculture in Georgia within the context of rural southern history, agronomy, environment, and popular culture. In fact, Okie writes lyrically, to the point that this could be a model book for those aspiring authors and historians who want to (and should) reach out to audiences beyond the academy, but all the while being academic in the process. If you are like me, you were wondering, “Well, is there not a bunch of books already out on the subject, especially as Georgia’s identity so revolves around peaches?” You would be surprised to read that there is not. Okie himself was surprised to discover this, set out to fill in the historiographical gap, and came up with this masterful book. Okie gives this question of identity plenty of attention, especially given the curious nature of it— peaches are hardly Georgia’s Number 1 crop and Georgia is hardly the country’s Number 1 peach producer; California and South Carolina come in ahead of the Peach State. So why is there an abundance of all-things-peach in Georgia? The peach is embossed on state license plates; there are peach blossom and fruit festivals; it is the name of many avenues, boulevards, and plazas in Atlanta; there are peach-oriented songs and poetry; and there is even its own Peach County. You will find this out in the book. Okie goes to great lengths to track these cultural beginnings, and you will have fun reading about them, just as assuredly Okie did in uncovering so many interesting sources about peaches. That discussion, along with important information about the roles of race, class, and gender, make this an important work of southern social history. Race especially gets broad coverage. For example, one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the region, Fort Valley State University (formerly Fort Valley High and Industrial School) is located in the heart of Georgia peach country, and it played an important role in the region’s agriculture just as peaches played an important role in the school’s history. The African American community suffered mightily in the region, with black workers being paid substantially lower wages than their white counterparts, and especially so at the end of the nineteenth century when Reconstruction-era lynching was an altogether too-frequent characteristic of the racist hegemony in the region. As it is a fine social history, near the end of the book, Okie also deals with how the peach industry came to develop agri-tourism in the region, tapping into the very sense of identity discussed above. Of course, tourism history relates to economic history—all of which combine nicely in between the (beautiful) covers of this book.

As an agricultural history, Georgia Peach will stand out as one of the most important works on the topic for the American South. Okie goes to great detail—sometimes too great and it bogs down the book in places in the first couple of chapters—to explain the horticulture, or more specifically the pomiculture, of the fruit: its Asian and European antecedents; the life histories of the horticulturists who developed peaches; and the individuals who engineered certain varieties especially for Georgia, such as the Elberta peach. In these ways, the book has a transnational and transregional flavor to it—the fruit trees, their developers, and other advocates came to Georgia from outside the state and nation. Along with this agronomical discussion, Okie provides the agrarian context and outcome of peach orchard development for central Georgia. Peach growers created a new landscape here—overlaid on one that used to produce cotton—a contemporary bucolic one in which people celebrate the orchards, the peach blossom festivals, and small-town agricultural life. They also benefit economically from it in many ways—as farmers, orchardists, itinerant harvesters, and packing companies, especially when rail transportation takes the peaches to the markets of the rest of the United States (especially the Northeast)—and it provides a great employment bonanza for an otherwise rather strapped and stagnant corner of the Deep South.

This book also makes important headway as an environmental history. More than just providing information here and there about landscape change, and later about pesticide abuse and water use in the peach orchards, Georgia Peach works to establish the human connection to nature in central Georgia. The relationship worked not only as a zone perfect for raising peaches but also for how the agronomists, farmers, and workers could adapt to this crop. Note Okie’s description of how Georgia’s peach country was hewn from the “southern world of plantation and thicket, order and disorder, landscape and counterlandscape, political and vernacular landscape” (16). Environmental historians might join me in questioning some of Okie’s discussion of “a wilderness of peach trees” (the title for Chapter 1, emphasis added), as the syntax for that w word has been the foundation of endless debates within the field. Nonetheless, he does explain his use of the term, and it could make for great classroom or seminar table discussions. On that note, he also explains how the book “is at heart a story about the power of environmental beauty” (7). Let that sink in—the power of something beautiful in nature; even though there were so many layers of agronomy and agricultural engineering involved with peach orchard creation, there is still beauty and power in a delicious Elberta peach. As mentioned above, Reconstruction ran through much of this story, especially in the early years of orchard creation, so Okie’s point about peach agriculture being based on a “renovated southern landscape” (4) also makes for great environmental history analysis.

This fine book should win many book awards. It should also have a secure place in any class on the agricultural or environmental history of the American South, on any reading list of southern cultural history, and in bookstores throughout the region. People from many walks of life should read this, and the cover that shows those delectable and juicy Georgia peaches might just be what first attracts them.