EXCEPTIONAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR DIVERSE PEOPLE IN THE NORTHERN COUNTRYSIDE

Growing a Global Village: Making History at Seabrook Farms. By Charles H. Harrison. New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 2003. Photos, notes, and index. $29.95.

Buxton: A Black Utopia in the Heartland. Expanded edition. By Dorothy Schwieder, Joseph Hraba, and Elmer Schwieder. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2003. xx + 256 pp. Map, photos, illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography and index. $19.95.

Stephen A. Vincent
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Growing a Global Village and Buxton: A Black Utopia recount intriguing episodes in American history that are at once disparate yet strikingly similar. In the former work, veteran journalist Charles Harrison tells the captivating story of southern New Jersey's Seabrook Farms, America's first agri-business and a pathbreaking pioneer in fast-freezing vegetables and fruits. Founded by Charles F. Seabrook in the 1890s and incorporated in 1913, Seabrook Farms was one of the most admired operations in agri-business in the mid-twentieth century. At its zenith in early 1950s Seabrook Farms crops were grown on more than 54,000 acres in a region that spilled across New Jersey's borders into three surrounding states. More than 4,000 workers filled its processing plants alone.