An entertaining and informative account of one man's attempt to live off the food he grows in his backyard in Brooklyn.

Robert Sullivan, author of Rats and Cross Country

"With My Empire of Dirt, Manny Howard has created a new job category, gonzo agriculturalist. The squeamish and the vegan-hearted shall enter at their own risk, for this is no gentle Farmer's Almanac. It's more like war reportage-on one side, angry rabbits, crazed chickens, and a patch of backyard clay so dry it makes concrete seem loamy; on the other, a Brooklyn-raised City Boy, who won't take crop failure for an answer. Howard takes living off the land to an urban extreme that will make people think even harder about where their food comes from. Ultimately, though, as tornadoes come and fig trees nearly go, he discovers a marriage that needs tending to, proving that when it comes to love, at least, you shall definitely reap what you sow."

Daniel Mendelsohn, author of The Lost

"Manny Howard's wonderful book is much more than a breezy romp across the line that divides urban from rural life. Yes, it crackles with intelligence and good humor, sparkles with hilarious anecdotes, and is studded with entertaining factoids about the agrarian life that Howard decided, so improbably, to adopt (you'll never hear the phrase "pecking order" in quite the same way again). But at its core this book belongs to a great American tradition that goes back to Thoreau: a lone man with big ideas decides to confront Nature on his own. That the nature in question happens to be in Brooklyn gives this book-which like its author is characterized by an unmistakably New York mix of huge ambition and wry self-deprecation-its unique and ultimately quite touching charm."