This book was written during WWII, E.B. White and his wife have moved to Maine and they are breeding chickens. My favorite essay, and one I read over and over is entitled Spring and is on page 231. This essay is why E.B. White became my favorite American writer. I love Twain too, but in a different way. I wish E.B. White had been my father. There is so much of hope and good sense in the man. ( )

The Maine farming sketches were entertaining, but the most interesting bits were about the war. A couple essays advocated for a higher world order -- merging the word's democracies -- which was surprising. ( )

After White (mostly) left The New Yorker magazine in the late 1930s, he took up writing a column for Harper's (the column shares the name with this book), and farmed on the side. Or, judging from this book, he took up farming and wrote on the side. White occasionally, and ruefully, admits he's not quite sure which is which. Generally low-key and pleasant observations of rural Maine in the late 1930s and early 1940s. This particular edition came out in the middle of the war, and includes a number of chapters written after the outbreak of the war. ( )

omg the first story knocked me over. what writing! ( )

Excellent collection of essays, primarily in Harpers and a couple or three from The New Yorker, from the immediate pre-war and early WW2 era (July 1938 through January 1942). White's life as a salt water farmer – actually and more precisely, as a "gentleman farmer" – in Maine, but with substantial digressions to nearly everything under the sun, including White's "world federalism" and his sometimes conflicting thoughts on the New Deal. ( )