The book is a compilation of the author's lecture notes and a series of essays he wrote for Chinese journal Shiji Pinglun.

[5] Even though Fei supported the Chinese Communist Party,[3] following their consolidation of rule on the mainland his works were nonetheless branded as "rightist" and "anti-Marxist" and were subsequently banned; in neighboring Taiwan, Fei's works were similarly restricted because he had expressed support for the Communist party, although From the Soil remained available in Hong Kong.

[5] After Fei was rehabilitated and sociology re-instated as a discipline in China in 1979, he was hired as a professor at Peking University and began teaching From the Soil as one of three required texts to small groups of graduate students.

[12] While From the Soil was banned in much of the Chinese-speaking world mere years after its publication, today it is one of Fei's most widely read books and, according to The New York Times, is a "cornerstone of modern sociology and anthropology.

[14] The University of California Press, its publisher in English, calls the book both "succinct and accessible" and "likely to have a wide impact on Western social theorists".