Homestead, schmomestead.

If you've ever indulged fantasies of selling off your belongings, moving to the country, and living off the land, Eleanor Agnew's new book Back from the Land: How Young Americans went to Nature in the 1970s and Why They Came Back (Ivan R. Dee, $27.50) might make you regain an appreciation for your Maytag. The book documents the lives of the back-to-the-landers--those young Americans, who in the 1970s, quit their urban lives and moved to the country to pursue life on their own terms. On their homesteads they grew their own food, chopped their own firewood, and eschewed plumbing and electricity. For many, the first years were a blissful struggle of harnessing the elements and creating communities of likeminded individuals. But, many of these well-educated folks eventually found washing clothes by hand and heating their water on stoves a bit monotonous. Weary of their self-induced poverty and the lack of intellectual stimulation, they slowly transitioned back from the land in droves. But not without a sense of pride at what they had accomplished.