Empty Pastures: Confined Animals and the Transformation of the Rural Landscape. Terence J. Centner. 2004. University of Illinois Press, Champaign. 189 pp. $35 cloth.

Terence J. Centner, a Professor in the Agriculture and Environmental Science Department of the University of Georgia, has created a work of profound importance. The book is short and the title is, frankly, unassuming and perhaps a bit misleading, at least until the reader reaches the last chapters of the book. The title implies that the book is simply a history of how the American agricultural system has evolved to become what it is today. The book is much more than a simple history of the transformations that have occurred in rural America since the 1960s. Instead, it provides chapters filled with detailed explanations of numerous agricultural, environmental, and property rights issues to educate the reader. Once the stage is set, the final chapter offers a nine-point plan to transform today's rural economy into something magnificent.