Comrades and Chicken Ranchers: The Story of a California Jewish Community.

During the last decade, scholars of American Jewish history have begun to shed their urban blinders and study those who went back to the soil and fanned their adopted land. Kenneth Kann's Comrades and Chicken Ranchers is an excellent addition to that literature. Kann interviewed three generations of Jewish men and women who raised and marketed chickens in Petaluma, California. In their own words, these Jewish chicken ranchers tell of their immigration experiences, the Great Depression, the Popular Front, McCarthyism, and the decline of the family farm in the face of agribusiness competition. In addition to economic and generational issues, Kann surveys the fault lines of …