Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Part 1. Apples
1. Before There Were Aliens, There Were Apples: Myths, Moths, and Modernity in New Mexico’s Early Commercial Orchards
2. Patent Lies and the “People’s Business”: The Modern Core of Northern New Mexico Agriculture, 1940–80
Part 2. Cotton
3. The Shifting Subjects of a Southwest King: Cotton, Agricultural Industrialization, and Migrations in the Interwar New Mexico Borderlands
4. Diversification, Paternalism, and the Transnational Threads of Cotton in Southern New Mexico: The Industrial Ideal at Work at Stahmann Farms, 1926–70
Part 3. Chile
5. Crossing Chiles, Crossing Borders: Dr. Fabián García, the New Mexican Chile Pepper, and Modernity in the Early Twentieth-Century U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
6. The Evolution of a Modern Pod: The Industrial Chile and Its Storytellers in New Mexico
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

William R. Carleton is the editor of Edible New Mexico and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
 

Reviews

"American agricultural historians will find this study revealing and suggestive for similar investigations regarding the development of modern agriculture across cultural borderlands where competing ideas and traditions merge to change the agricultural landscape for crops, people, and the land. It also is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of New Mexico. Carleton has written an informative and engaging agricultural history for New Mexico that significantly contributes to the larger agricultural history of the United States."—R. Douglas Hurt, Agricultural History Review

"Carleton . . . provides a unique text on the agricultural history of New Mexico that would be relevant as an addition to any library institution supporting programs in history or agricultural history, and is essential for libraries in the southwestern US and northern Mexico, as well as those supporting historical study of the American West."—J. Cummings, Choice

“William Carleton tells a richly textured story of New Mexican agriculture that sheds new light on the rise of modern industrial agriculture in the twentieth century. In particular, he shows in fascinating detail how ‘industrial’ agriculture often incorporated ‘traditional’ elements and therefore how misleading those labels can be.”—William Thomas Okie, author of The Georgia Peach: Culture, Agriculture, and Environment in the American South

“Extremely important. . . . Fruit, Fiber, and Fire is a significant contribution to the fields of New Mexico history, Southwest history, agricultural history, historical geography, cultural history, and borderlands history.”—Sterling Evans, author of Bound in Twine: The History and Ecology of the Henequen-Wheat Complex for Mexico and the American and Canadian Plains, 1880–1950