Book Review

The second book which I read for this project was Monarchs of the
Fields by Faye Rieneberg Holt history of combine harvester. The book started
with the conception of the first combine harvester up in till the modern
combine. The started talking about how farmers had harvested fields without
combine harvester, without combines it took large groups of men that would
cut the grain with horse pulled cutters then bundled and hauled off the field.
At a later date they would start the threshing process which took many men
as well as lots of time. The first combines were not anything like they are
today they were massive and pull by horses and were horrible at turning in
the fields. Many farmers never made the switch simply because they cost too
much and they had many problems. As the years went on the improvements
meant more farmers took the risk and bought and combine harvester. Later
during world war 2 one of the first self-propelled even though the war was on
and steel was being used for the war the government made a deal that 500
combines were made and farmers that bought one would have to harvest
500 acres for other people. As self-propelled became more popular the
amount of people need for harvesting dropped drastically then with
threshing crews. The book was short in length only about 50 pages but had
lots of information. The book told the story in correct time line. They found
people who had bought combines or had worked with them in the past this
was very interesting to see and hear what people thought about these
combines when they first came out. The book had many photos which
connected to the writing as well captions which Cleary explained the photo.
When I found the book I thought it would be an ok book because it very short
but after reading the book I found it very interesting and lots of information
packed in this short book in a clear and interesting way.