People have long imagined themselves as rooted creatures, bound to the earth-and nations-from which they came. In 'Rootedness', Christy Wampole looks toward philosophy, ecology, literature, history, and politics to demonstrate how the metaphor of the root-surfacing often in an unexpected variety of places, from the family tree to folk etymology to the language of exile-developed in twentieth-century Europe. Wampole examines both the philosophical implications of this metaphor and its political evolution.