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Podcast: New Books in Public Policy
Episode: Powering American Farms: A Conversation with Richard Hirsh
Description: Richard Hirsh, Professor of History at Virginia Tech, talks about his book, Powering American Farms: The Overlooked Origins of Rural Electrification (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022), with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Powering American Farms is a revisionist history of rural electrification that calls into question a long standard story that rural electrification only began through the powers of the US federal government during the New Deal. Through extensive archival research, Hirsh finds a wide variety of activities around electrification on farms, through efforts of utilities, academic researchers, agricultural extension programs, and farmers themselves.Lee Vinsel is an associate profe...