Hello,
My name is Caroline and I am a student at Goucher College doing a large
research paper on Robert Rodale and the organic farming movement he, in
turn, created. I am having difficulties finding reputable information about
Rodale and his work, and I was hoping someone might be able to help. Does anyone know of any
good articles, magazines, books, or films that could be of help? I've been searching card catalogs across my state for
the past week and have come across nothing worth mentioning. The problem I'm coming across is that whenever I look for information on "Robert Rodale" or "Organic Farming/Gardening," I find books published by Rodale press, and
books explaining HOW to farm organically (ie. methods to keep bugs off the
leaves of veggie plants). Although this material is interesting, right now I need to focus on obtaining information on the actual person, Rodale, his motives, his actions, and then of course (perhaps most importantly) "his" organic movement and the response society had to it. If anyone has any ideas or sourrces of information, I would really appreciate it. My e-mail is shumnum@aol.com. Thank you very much for your time and I look forward to hearing
from some of you soon.
Sincerely,
Caroline
ShumNum@aol.com

Try this:

Go to www.google.com
In the search bar enter: "Robert Rodale" and hit enter (you must enter the quotation marks or this won't work as well)

I tried it and found quite a bit of stuff including a few biographies written about him.

Have fun, Geoff

Another great search engine is Ask Jeeves.com.
Try different combinations until you get the results you're looking for. It's the only one I use now, beause it's so extensive!
Good Luck!

You might also look up info on his father, JI Rodale, who first "introduced" the organic concept to the US in the late 1930s. For even more background, you might be interested in looking up Sir Albert Howard, who was an English agricultural advisor in India and studied the benefits of composting. Good luck---sounds like a facinating study!
I am currently reading a book by Robert Rodale called "Sane Living in a Mad World", 1972 Rodale Press. Although it does have a lot of info perhaps not pertinant to your paper, it also mentions lots of studies and their findings, as well as popular beliefs of that era. Might have some helpful info within its pages of diet, gardening, etc.

it is most likely too late, but in case it's not. i would suggest the dogpile.com as a search engine. it searches both google & ask jeeves, also many others & give you the 10 best results of teh bunch.

here is the dogpile.com search page result for the serch "Robert Rodale"
http://search.dogpile.com/texis/search?q=%22%22Robert+R...%22%22&geo=no&fs=web
you'll notice that several of these are bios, # 2 written by Anthony Rodale

here is the result for "JI Rodale"
http://search.dogpile.com/texis/search?q=%22ji+Rodale%22&geo=no&fs=web
no where as many listings for the info you want. but, the movement wasn't as large during his lifetime. i remember reading his articles in old OG's, he alwasy believed general acceptance was going to happen next year. it's too bad he isn't here to see how generally accepted it has become. you might try to dig up some old copies of OG at a public library.


cc:ShumNum@aol.com