I am a historian and farmer living on the ragged edge of eastern Vermont.  By day, I chair the Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies Department at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire; by every time else, I tend to a herd of cows and a flock of sheep at Taste for Good Farm.  These two passions come together in my writing, most recently, Eli and the Octopus:  The CEO Who Tried to Reform One of America’s Most Notorious Corporations (Harvard University Press, 2023).  Eli and the Octopus is a biography of Eli M. Black, the immigrant entrepreneur and once-rabbi who tried to infuse “social responsibility” into our food system by working with union leaders in Honduras and California to reform United Fruit Company.  Eli’s efforts foundered on his ill-conceived plans to marry creative, acquisitive capitalism with feeding the world.  My experiment of raising grass-fed beef and lamb is a far more modest endeavor, but as a business owner practicing regenerative agriculture, I understand the challenges involved in producing healthy, profitable food in a market economy.  My hope is that my writing and farming inspire a worthy struggle to bring environmental and social justice to the fields and people that feed us.