James Giesen's book does not just describe the history of the boll weevil—a small beetle that feeds on cotton—but also analyzes its impacts on the southern economy and examines the political economy of the region's responses. He charts the path and influence of the boll weevil which spread through the South between 1890 and 1930. The book argues that the “myth” of the boll weevil was stronger than its actual effects: the boll weevil affected power relations between landowners and tenants and spawned the growth of government's interest and involvement in agriculture, but this was in contrast to the actual less than catastrophic effects of the beetle.

This book adds to the literature of a long tradition of economic historians studying Southern agriculture, tenant farming, and migration to the North. Gavin Wright's (1986) discussion of the influence of racism and a separate low wage labor market in maintaining Southern poverty in this time period fits with Giesen's argument about power relations between white farmers and black tenants. Giesen repeatedly discusses the surprising lack of transition of black farmers from tenants to owners which ties into the argument made by Lee J. Alston and Joseph P. Ferrie (2005) that movement of blacks was usually “down the ladder” rather than up. Finally, this book adds to a significant literature specifically on the boll weevil. Giesen discusses the work of Fabian Lange, Alan L. Olmstead, and Paul W. Rhode (2009), which finds negative economic impacts of the boll weevil as well as substantial migration responses.

Giesen traces the boll weevil's invasion from the Texas border in the 1890s and movement through the South, reaching Georgia in the early 1920s, and illustrates how the social and economic effects depended on the context of each state. He uses a combination of personal letters, newspaper reports, and USDA government documents to create a picture. Chapter 1 starts in Texas around 1905. The book describes a farmer who testified to a USDA field agent that he had tried burning and poisoning the boll weevil, but it just would not die. The USDA saw the boll weevil as an opportunity to encourage diversification away from cotton in the South and to “create its own image as a bulwark against” the boll weevil. Chapter 1 also shows us how the boll weevil infestation could have been stopped by a proposed ban on growing cotton in parts of Texas in 1895, but this compulsory legislation failed to pass.

Chapter 2 illustrates the relationship between the boll weevil, farmers, and the farms’ tenants. It shows how farmers reacted to increased power of tenants who could migrate. In this time period, blues music was born and many songs were written about the boll weevil. Despite the fear of the boll weevil and the myth that it was destroying cotton, between 1890 and 1910, Texas and Louisiana cotton output actually increased despite a few bad years. Over this time period, USDA demonstration farms also spread throughout the South, demonstrating ways to fight the pest.

In Chapter 3, the boll weevil moves into the Mississippi delta. This chapter details the control of information about the boll weevil. Landowners controlled the information their tenants could access and also influenced the spread of federal and state agriculture programs. In this chapter, we also see more evidence of resistance to crop diversification. Chapter 4 chronicles solutions to the boll weevil in the Delta. We see the beginning of crop dusting in response to this pest. This period also heralded the founding of the Delta and Pine Land Company (DPLC), which turned into the largest plantation in the South and also had the resources to experiment. Big plantations like the DPLC learned to use arsenic-based poisons to kill the boll weevils, but in the process also harmed the tenant farmers on the ground, the extent of which is still unknown.

As the boll weevil moves into Alabama in Chapters 5 and 6, there is finally promise of diversification. Land grant universities were founded by 1910 and the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama “became a major voice for crop diversification.” In south east Alabama, mobile schools taught farmers about the benefits of diversifying into peanuts and sweet potatoes. Average farm values and farm ownership grew over the 1910s but by the 1920s farmers had turned back to cotton and well-being declined. Giesen blames the failure of diversification on the failure of extension agents to influence farmers and an underlying racism, which meant efforts were targeted to whites despite an overwhelming percentage of farmland being farmed by blacks.

In Chapter 7, Giesen shows the interplay of the idea that the boll weevil was responsible for Georgia's move away from cotton and the reality on the ground that this myth was perpetuated even before the boll weevil's arrival. He shows how migration out of Georgia was blamed on the beetle even though it was more likely due to poor schools and the hope of higher incomes in the North. Nonetheless, Georgia had crop losses of over 40 percent in certain years of the 1920s.

Throughout the book, we see a narrative of adaptation to the pest and a reshaping of both government's role in agriculture and, to a certain extent, tenant-landlord relations. The main strength of this book is in the use of individual and local narratives to paint a larger picture. The book adds a substantial contribution to the economic history literature. If it has a weakness, it is that at times Giesen makes claims that are too strong. I highly recommend this book to economic historians as well as non-historians, and particularly to those interested in the boll weevil or interested in Southern history.