In this fascinating cultural and natural history, Cindy Ott tells the story of the pumpkin. Beginning with the myth of the first Thanksgiving, she shows how Americans have used the pumpkin to fulfill their desire to maintain connections to nature and to the family farm of lore, and, ironically, how small farms and rural communities have been revitalized in the process.

Table of Contents

• Foreword: Not by Bread Alone, by William Cronon
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 CORN, BEANS, AND JUST ANOTHER SQUASH 10,000 BCE to 1600
• 2 “THE TIMES WHEREIN OLD POMPION WAS A SAINT” From Pumpkin Beer to Pumpkin Pie, 1600 to 1799
• 3 THOREAU SITS ON A PUMPKIN The Making of a Rural New England Icon, 1800 to 1860
• 4 “WONDERFULLY GRAND AND COLOSSAL” The Pumpkin and the Nation, 1861 to 1899
• 5 JACK-O'-LANTERN SMILES Americans Celebrate the Fall Harvest with Pumpkins, 1900 to 1945
• 6 ATLANTIC GIANTS TO JACK-BE-LITTLES The Changing Nature of Pumpkins, 1946 to the Present
• 7 PULLING UP A PIG STY TO PUT IN A PUMPKIN PATCH The Changing Nature of American Rural Economies, 1946 to the Present
• Bibliography