“The quirky and brilliant David Grene, one of the founding members of the Committee on Social Thought, has written a quirky and brilliant memoir. Setting out the path that took him to the University of Chicago in 1937 and encompassing his subsequent sixty-five-year association with that institution, Grene gives us one of the preeminent general accounts of intellectual life in the twentieth century.”

Norma Thompson, Yale University

“Distinguished and imaginative. This memoir’s idiosyncrasy and its engagement with ideas make it an absorbing read, partly because David Grene’s personality was evidently unusual and compelling, and partly because he has such a vivid way of making the reader imagine his experiences and attend to his reflections.”

Pat Easterling, Newnham College, University of Cambridge

“David Grene’s writing is powerful, simple, and elegant. The personalities he presents are vivid, fascinating, and important. Above all shines through his own personality, his joy of living and intense appreciation of friends.”

Mary Douglas, University College London

"The late David Grene’s small memoir tries to explain how, at least in the case of one exemplary life, farming and classics enhanced each other. . . . Grene reminds us of two crucial aspects of modern life exemplified by this rare individual. First is the symbiosis between the life of contemplation and action — and just how it is that hard physical and dirty work offers real value in rediscovering nature, bringing with it a certain pragmatism that permeates reading and thinking. . . .Second, Grene reminds us of what constitutes success in life."

Victor Davis Hanson | New York Sun

"David Grene’s legacy . . . is the effect of his teaching and enthusiasm on his students, who have passed it on to their students. I am certain that his published recollections will cause him to be rememberd by readers not fortunate enough to have known the man."

William M. Calder III | Bryn Mawr Classical Review

“David Grene could easily be described with the cliché ‘last of a breed,’ but he was also the first of his kind. Or at least, the first in a long time. . . . His personal style reincarnated that of the Roman artistocrats, with their love of the soil and taste for good books. . . . Of Farming & Classics delightfully recounts an era before corporate agriculture did in the family farm and pettifogging professionalism insulated the ivory tower from the larger world.”

Ron Grossman | Chicago Tribune

“An illuminating read for every classical scholar engaged with the current quest for the subject’s roots, and the excavation of the way that it has evolved over the past century and a half.”

Edith Hall | Times Literary Supplement

"A minor classic by a major classicist."

Michael Longley | Irish Times

"This little gem . . . calls more for notice than formal review. It is beautifully written and (I found) compulsively readable."

James G. Keenan | Classical Bulletin

"Grene comes across in these pages as an extraordinary man whose great intellect was coupled with humility and wide-ranging curiosity. His writing is dense, but precise and thoughtful, as if each sentence was polished until it carried its burden of meaning as perfectly as possible. It is an old-fashioned sort of writing, perhaps, but then Mr. Grene lived an old-fashioned sort of life."

Debra Hamel | Midwest Book Review