What Are People For?

by Wendell Berry

In the twenty-two essays collected here, Wendell Berry, whom "The Christian Science Monitor "called ""the "prophetic American voice of our day," conveys a deep concern for the American economic system and the gluttonous American consumer. Berry talks to the reader as one would talk to a next-door neighbor: never preachy, he comes across as someone offering sound advice. He speaks with sadness of the greedy consumption of this country's natural resources and the grim consequences Americans must face if current economic practices do not change drastically. In the end, these essays offer rays of hope in an otherwise bleak forecast of America's future. Berry's program presents convincing steps for America's agricultural and cultural survival.


Damage --
Healing --
A remarkable man [Nate Shaw] --
Harry Caudill in the Cumberlands --
A few words in favor of Edward Abbey --
Wallace Stegner and the great community --
A poem of difficult hope --
Style and grace --
Writer and region --
The responsibility of the poet --
God and country --
A practical harmony --
An argument for diversity --
What are people for? --
Waste --
Economy and pleasure --
The pleasures of eating --
The work of local culture --
Why I am not going to buy a computer --
Feminism, the body, and the machine --
Word and flesh --
Nature as measure

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Nature, Environment, Cultural, Economics

210 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1990

About the author

Wendell Berry is a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet. He was born August 5, 1934 in Henry County, Kentucky where he now lives on a farm. The New York Times has called Berry the "prophet of rural America."

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this with my book club, but most people didn't finish it because they were too confused by the format and bored with the first two sections so they quit before it got good. This book is excellent, but an orientation is in order...

Part 1: The shortest section. It's poetic, almost proverb-esque. Interesting, but a little strange.

Part 2: This consists of several essays Berry wrote about people several decades ago, none of them you will have heard of. If this bores you, skip it. After those, there's a chapter about a poem (if you don't like poetry, skip this too). The essay "Style and Grace" is about the novel "A River Runs Through It" and is definitely worth reading; same goes for "Write and Region" which is about "Huckleberry Finn".

Part 3: Pure gold. This is Berry at his finest, defining our culture's illnesses and casting vision for the future. The essays here are loosely organized around the themes of community, human dignity, work and consumerism. This section could serve as a great introduction to Berry's thought and work for a new reader.

My absolute favorite essays are:

What are People For?
Economy and Pleasure
The Pleasures of Eating
Why I'm Not Going to Buy a Computer
Feminism, the Body, and the Machine
Word and Flesh

[Josh Barkey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of essays. A series of meditations. An alternate path. I LOVE this guy, even as I resent him for revealing to me my complicity in this deranged culture, and the necessity in my life for real, deep change.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“History simply affords too little evidence that anyone’s individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.”

I have read an article/essay here and there by Wendell Berry, and a few talks and interviews, but this is my first time reading one of his books. He is a remarkable man. Some have called him a curmudgeon; old-fashioned. But what I see is someone with an open mind. Steadfast. Quietly wise. Inspirational. A prophet, showing the way, speaking hard truths to us.

These essays were written in the 1980’s, and it is sad to see how much worse some things have gotten in the decades since.

“The probability is overwhelming that we belong to a generation that will be found by its successors to have behaved deplorably. Not to know that is, again, to be in error and to neglect essential work, and some of this work, as before, is work of the imagination.”

I like this idea of imagining. We are so easily swept up in what everyone else is doing, what we are told to do. Do we have to give up that easily the things we feel in our bones are the better ways of living?

“To me, an economy that sees the life of a community or a place as expendable, and reckons its value only in terms of money, is not acceptable because it is not realistic.”

Berry is a very practical man. He has respect for regional economies, meaningful work, and the natural world. He walks the talk. He is a farmer who sees his way of life, arguably our way of life and survival, disappearing. He seems to be saying we act too abstractly; that we rely on corporations and governments and outsiders to come up with solutions that should be brought by people working in and loving the area of the problem.

His criticism can be caustic, but darned if it isn’t true.

“The food industrialists have by now persuaded millions of consumers to prefer food that is already prepared. They will grow, deliver, and cook your food for you and (just like your mother) beg you to eat it. That they do not yet offer to insert it, prechewed, into your mouth is only because they have found no profitable way to do so.”

There is much to ponder here. I’m left feeling melancholy but inspired. And hopeful, I guess, that there is at least one person out there who is living a full, principled and practical life.

“My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think, we should be so employed. And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves.”

[Libby · Rating 4 out of 5]

gotta love this farmer-philosopher.


“When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be -- I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” --wendell berry

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

What are People For? by Wendell Berry

There are seventeen essays in this collection and a small number of pages of poetry.

Berry is an excellent essayist and I consider the essays on Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey to be the gems here. Both are five stars easy. Berry understands these men and writes so eloquently and reverently of their humanity and even their flaws.

His essays that are most specific or narrow in subject matter and about people are the best. Some of the others like the Responsibility of a Poet or a Practical Harmony felt too general or philosophical.

4 stars. A solid collection of essays from the well noted author in the genre of Regional Environmentalism. Glad I read it.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hey party people! This was a good read. Truthfully, not all the essays caught my attention right away, especially in Part 1 -- I'm looking at you, "A Few Words in Favor of Edward Abbey" -- but nonetheless, I felt as though I was able to glean something from each essay. Here are some of my favorites in no particular order:
- Healing / Damages**
- God and Country
- A Practical Harmony
- Economy and Pleasure
- The Pleasures of Eating


**I view these 2 essays as one. They are absolutely beautifully written. I know I said there's no particular order, but these 2 are my favorites.

[Laura Clawson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorites from this collection: Waste, The Pleasures of Eating, and Feminism, The Body, and the Machine.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, isn't that a touch of irony.

I was probably fifty words away from finishing a review of this book and then my laptop randomly shutdown (with plenty of power).

It's an irony given one of the most interesting essays in this book: "Why I am not going to buy a Computer". I don't know what my life would look like if I was able to give reasons for not buying a computer, but I'm closer to being able to give those reasons.

*sigh* I think I'll just cut this review a bit shorter as nobody needs my rambling/windbaggyness. (At least, I don't, right now)

There's a lot of good essays in the book.
A lot of what feels like thoughtful, well-crafted essays (e.g. Style and Grace). I had to read this book pretty slowly, both to get into it and to just spend some time thinking about it.

I liked being introduced to the word usufruct in discussion about stewardship and community (instead of resources being hoarded by fewer people).

Most of Part 3 was hard-hitting essays. Not sure which but right now Economy and Pleasure and Feminism, The Body, and the Machine stick out.

So yes, we are more than 30 years after this book, and a lot has changed.
In many ways, Berry seemed to be advocating for things that have taken place: I see a lot more people thinking seriously about our use of resources, care for our environment - local and further out, social responsibility, eating local, living and being wiser. That's a bad summary and there's a lot of ways we have become less thoughtful, but it's interesting.

I do think the Internet (limited when these essays were written) has changed things. Partly the democratization of information. People are able, for good and bad, to see more quickly direct impacts small actions have. They are also able to (re-)learn work that was dying or pursue something for the pleasure of it. I'm thinking whatever the movement is called that includes 'micro-brewing' and 'knife-forging' and 'sailboat building'. I don't know, in a lot of ways people are able to branch out and become less specialized. So it's interesting/sad? that most people's (mine too) main work is still being pushed into further specialization and working in a system that... well, is weirdly anti-people.
I will be thinking about this book a lot - why I do things, what I value, why I should value what I value, who benefits, who loses... so many questions and things to ponder.

We do need more voices like Berry. We need voices that are comfortable with throwing water in our face, and laughing at the refreshed look in our eye.

[Emily Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought-provoking reflections on the economy, work, family, and technology. I enjoyed his essay “Economy and Pleasure” most talking about the false pleasures in our society and the joy of hard work as the alternative. Although I don’t agree with all his conclusions, Berry’s arguments are helping me to think critically about issues surrounding technology, feminism, the environment, and culture.

[Phil reading_fastandslow · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s not often we get to discover a new favorite author, and it may be too early to tell, but I am savoring that feeling.

After reading this short essay collection, I now have the insatiable urge to read everything Wendell Berry ever wrote. He is one of the most eloquent writers I have ever come across in essay form, and I’m eager to read what he can do in poetry and fiction.

I would’ve switched the book review essays with others, but that’s alright.

“More and more, we take for granted that work must be destitute of pleasure. More and more, we assume that if we want to be pleased we must wait until evening, or the weekend, or vacation, or retirement. More and more, our farms and forests resemble our factories and offices, which in turn more and more resemble prisons—why else should we be so eager to escape them? We recognize defeated landscapes by the absence of pleasure from them. We are defeated at work because our work gives us no pleasure. We are defeated at home because we have no pleasant work there. We turn to the pleasure industries for relief from our defeat, and are again defeated, for the pleasure industries can thrive and grow only upon our dissatisfaction with them.

Where is our comfort but in the free, uninvolved finally mysterious beauty and grace of this world that we did not make, that has no price? Where is our sanity but there? Where is our pleasure but in working and resting kindly in the presence of this world?”

[Shanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't read this to feel good about yourself or the modern American way. As ever, Berry points out the harm our industrial age is doing -- to the planet, to us, to families, to happiness, to the future -- and also shows us how it's not enough to say you're a victim of it, what can you do? Parts of it felt very heavy to me. Like reading a bad diagnosis or terrible report. But I'm glad I read it. Singing throughout the essays, I hear Berry's essay on Howard's End (not in this book but available online) and the quote he named it for: "It all turns on affection." The way forward has got to be this.

[John Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having previously read Berry’s Port William novels, it was compelling to see his views come to life with even greater precision and force in essay form. While provocative, his takes on conservation, economics, and technology are imminently well thought (and lived) out. Especially enjoyed the essay entitled “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine”, of which I have included an excerpt:

“The higher aims of ‘technological progress’ are money and ease. And this exulted greed for money and ease is disguised and justified by an obscure, cultish faith in ‘the future’. How we can hope to make a good future by doing badly in the present, we do not say.”

[Dani Dányi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sokat kéne írni erről a kötetről. Először is: le kéne fordítani (ha máshogy* nem, legalább részleteket.) Benne van az ipari termelés verzusz önellátás, helyi verzusz ellátólánc, ökológiai veszteségek, diverzitás és fenntarthatóság**, tájpusztulás, szennyezés és szemét, általános életmódváltás, eltávolodás a természettől, agrár- és általános nagyvállalatiasodás, az egész társadalmi és lelki, technológiai, újkori mizéria, beleértve családot, eltérített feminizmust, értelmiségi szerepvállalásokat, számítógépet, ott az egész rohadt korunk.

A szerző amúgy ideológiailag nem kimondottan elkötelezett: költő és gazdálkodó, keresztény amerikai, családos ember. Mindezt Berry leírta úgy egy tucat esszében, angolul és nagy nyilvánosság előtt, '85-'90 között, nagyon érthető, közérthető, logikus módon Halvány reményei azóta nyilván tovább halványodtak, bár a kis lépéseket becsüli, és a hit is munkaeszköz, a munka pedig jól elvégezve jó.

Erősen sokkoló egy ennyire összeszedett és világos katalógust kapni kézbe, mintegy 40 évvel később, mindarról ami el van baszva és nagyon nagy munka lesz (vagy lenne) kimászni belőle. De főleg az sokkol, hogy igen, mindent tudtunk, láttunk, értettünk, leírták, olvastuk, és előrelépés azóta maximum annyi, hogy az ökológiai katasztrófa lezajlott és az emberiség elidegenedett a saját maga elpusztította tájaitól.

Persze mindig jobb tudni. Vagyis hát, mindig rossz is tudni. Olvassátok és sírjatok. Olvassátok és változtassunk.


* esszékötetet kiadni? na igen...
**még nem hívták úgy, hogy fenntarthatóság! ennyire régen írta.

[Deborah Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first (not last!) foray into Berry’s nonfiction. There is much to appreciate here- particularly his independence of thought.

[Anima · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘ From the imperfections of life, one could take refuge in the perfections of art. One could read a good poem- or better, write one.
[..]
There is a sense in which I no longer “go to work.” If I live in my place, which is my subject, then I am “at” my work even when I am not working. It is “my” work because I cannot escape it.

If I live in my subject, then writing about it cannot “free” me of it or “get it out of my system.” When I am finished writing, I can only return to what I have been writing about. While I have been writing about it, time will have changed it.

Over longer stretches of time, I will change it. Ultimately, it will be changed by what I write, inasmuch as I, who change my subject, am changed by what I write about.’

[Letitia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually finished this book more than a week ago, but I am only just reviewing it now because I continue to feel ambivalent about it. For one thing, as a collection of essays, I find that some are deeply meaningful and have personal significance, but others are dry, irrelevant (either due to being dated or too specific), or misguided in their objective.

Wendell Berry is not an eloquent writer, but he is a good one, in that his message is clear and his words convey a beautiful simplicity that one expects to find in a self-named "regional writer" who identifies first and foremost as a farmer. His content, however, suffers from the seemingly incurable malignancy of being a progressive white male who truly believes he is woke. I read this work with sympathy, with openness, trying to understand him in the context of the state in which I live (Kansas), of a dying way of life (non-industrial agriculture), of a man who sees the pitfalls of technology as well as their merit. But in the end I can't quite manage to agree with him that things were more beautiful and simple the way they were. He misses structures and systems and oppressive cultural norms due to the myopia of his own life.

I found the most commonality with Berry in his rants against economic imperialism, as he bemoaned the death of the Earth, of his anger at the politics that drove men like him to poverty. In his essay Economy and Pleasure, he had a particularly insightful section on competition, in which he says, "If one is willing to take another's property or to accept another's ruin as a normal result of economic enterprise, then he is willing to destroy that other person's life as it is and as it desires to be. That this person's biological existence has been spared seems merely incidental; it was spared because it was not worth anything. That this person is now "free" to "seek retraining and get into another line of work" signifies only that his life as it was has been destroyed." The wisdom of his words is a beautifully crafted burn against "The American Dream", an ideology against which he and I struggle in futility.

But then on the other hand he'll delve into, and double-down on, truly problematic viewpoints. In defending his use of wife as secretary who types up his manuscripts, in his efforts to eliminate race from consciousness, he misses the point. It really hits home when, in the Word and Flesh essay he claims: "...though we have been talking about most of our problems for decades, we are still mainly talking about them. The civil rights movement has not given us better communities. The women's movement has not given us better marriages or better households. The environmental movement has not changed our parasitic relationship to nature."

Hold up, say what? My marriage (in which I include my first marriage which ended in divorce, specifically BECAUSE of the women's rights movement), is definitely better, and the work in my household is unquestionably more equitable. I'm not sure if he's opining lack of action behind ideals, which I get, or if he's waving a nihilistic white flag of surrender to things as they are.

So in the end, there is certainly fodder for thought and discussion here, and I think for someone that seeks to have a greater perspective of the disenfranchised rural community (which is specifically why I read this), there are a few essays within that contain great wisdom. But it's definitely not an overall masterpiece, and I don't think Berry's words should be taken whole cloth without serious consideration of his position as a straight, white male living in the middle of the 20th century.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wendell Berry has a perspective, and it contrasts with much of what passes today as common sense or regular living. Berry, a farmer, novelist, and poet, cares deeply for the land. He holds a long view, not looking to increase the land's productivity for short-term gain, but to care for it in a proper fashion, one borne out of generations of experience, leaving both land and the creatures that live upon it healthier than they would otherwise be. Berry's concern for the environment (from Kentucky, he has seen the damaging results of strip mining), lead him to related concerns about the economy, community life, and novel technologies. That Berry is even asking questions about our need for the latest and greatest technologies flies in the face of general practice today. That he was asking these questions 25 or 30 years ago, before cultural products became even more disposable than they were then suggests the need for voices like Berry's, then and now.

The introductory essays on damage and healing set the tone for the book. Berry sees the damage all around. He lives to heal that damage in his small corner of the world. Reading the book as something of an exhortation, Berry would be keen to see his readers take up his cause, even if the results were only evident in their own homes. The middle section combines several book reviews, which are really more meditations on themes addressed in those books. The final section combines about ten essays on the environment, economics, and community. Of these, "God and Country," which deals with the relationship between Christianity and ecology, and "Economy and Pleasure," which deals with the ascension of free-market economics and the guiding principle of competition, are the real standouts for me. These two essays are not simply brilliantly written, they also express a compassionate and community-oriented view of big economy and big religion that we cannot hear enough about.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

And when?

[Marcella Chatham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very pleasantly surprised with this read. The book is comprised of 3 parts.
The first two parts Berry talks about poetry and a few stories about different people (seemed either about different writers or fellow farmers). It's a little bit of a trudge to get through the first two parts if you're not super interested or knowledgeable about poetry. There were a few good nuggets in there but generally, it was a little boring. I don't know much about poetry (yet) so I feel like I couldn't really appreciate what he was talking about.

And then you get to part 3.

The sheer amount of mic drops my dear Wendell Berry writes in the third part was MOOORREEE than enough to make up for the first half of the book. Berry says the hard things everyone else is thinking but is too afraid to since its against current culture. Although the book was published over 30 years ago, we're in an even deeper pit than Berry wrote about then.
I wish I could pick one favorite essay but I literally can't. His passion against big agriculture, big food, and feminism helps root his clear love for local household and community economies. I think, if anything, it just confirmed everything I've been feeling about where we get our food, our pleasures of eating, family and community.

A couple quotes I really love (and there are so many more where they came from):

"Even so, if one wishes to save anything not protected by the present economy - topsoil, groves of old trees, the possibility of the goodness or health of anything, even the economic relevance of the biblical tradition - one is a part of a remnant, and a dwindling remnant too, though not without hope, and not without the necessary instructions, the most pertinent of which, perhaps, is this, also from Revelation: 'Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die.' "

"Our kitchens and other eating places more and more resemble filling stations, as our homes more and more resemble motels. “Life is not very interesting,” we seem to have decided. “Let its satisfactions be minimal, perfunctory, and fast.” We hurry through our meals to go to work and hurry through our work to “recreate” ourselves in the evenings, and on weekends and vacations. And then we hurry, with the greatest possible speed and noise and violence, through our recreation - for what? To eat the billionth hamburger at some fast food joint hellbent on increasing the “quality” of our life? And all this is carried out in a remarkable obliviousness to the causes and effects, the possibilities and the purposes, of the life of the body in this world."

"Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate “relationship” involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which the rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage, in other words, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided. During their understandably temporary association, the “married” couple will typically consume a large quantity of merchandise and a large portion of each other."

"They assume - and this is the orthodox assumption of the industrial economy - that the only help worth giving is not given at all, but sold. Love, friendship, neighborliness, compassion, duty - what are they? We are realists. We will be most happy to receive your check."

Read the physical copy from our local library.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gosh I love Wendell berry!! He makes me rethink so much of what I just thought was normal or perhaps just the way it always is and will be. These essays were written before I was born, yet so many of the issues today are just newer versions of the same- nothing new under the sun! I This collection of essays really had me reflecting on our purpose, community, and the places and things we steward.

also with each berry book I read the closer I get to falling off the grid and just living on a farm somewhere

[Davey Ermold · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with another reviewer on here: the second section can be laborious to work through, but section three is one delightful essay after another.

Berry has this knack for carving his own path. His philosophy, his worldview is consistent and humble. Whether one agrees with him or not, reading his essays gives one insight into the spectacular simplicity of country life, and draws one to consider if we shouldn’t be looking to go back.

[sarah smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

thanks berry, going to throw out my computer and grow my own food now

[Robert]

Yes. But also, ouch.

[Simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Berry's intelligence shows in these essays. They should come with a disclaimer though: All his thinking relies on assumptions based on christianity and a farming lifestyle: Family is the highest aim of life, nature has a will, purpose and value outside of consciousness, bodily labor is the essence of humanity impoverished by technological aid, and so on. If you don't agree with those, you might not like some of his ideas.

Another useful disclaimer is that Berry has a few essays about farmers, writers and other people that most probably don't know, which makes essays about them of little immediate use.
He also tends to repetition, you can sum up most of his ideas in this book in a couple pages. And somehow, i felt like i didn't really learn much that i didn't know before in these essays, except in the one about poetry or literature.

On the other hand, some of his ideas about life are refreshing because they are so unfamiliar to big city dwellers, and might show them critical issues in their life like the waste problem. And the clear, philosophically precise form of his arguments makes pretty much the best version of them given his assumptions. I study computer science, but his argument for not buying a computer is sound and well put and i agree that for his current purposes it isn't necessary, though it might help him improve his farming at some point.

Berry shows how destructive mass production can be, how technology doesn't always improve life and comes at a price, how we are seduced by consumerism and vulgar entertainment. He even gives practical advice on how to improve our relation to food even as city people.
But i feel a collection of essays should be more densely packed with ideas and less biased, otherwise essays turn into christian magazine columns, and Berry's own bias of world view is only too clear.

[E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first encountered Wendell Berry in freshman English at OBU. The essay we read seems to be in this volume, "Word and Flesh" (at least this essay makes the same points I remember from 1992). At the time I disagreed with him, particularly that problems, including environmental problems, cannot be approached globally but can only be addressed locally.

I came back to Berry near the turn of the millennium, when I read his poetry and fell in love. The poetry invited me into the essays, and Berry has been one of the most significant influence on my thought.

But his ideas are rarely easy for me. In fact, they are quite difficult. He is not a writer I read for confirmation of my own ideas, but to convict and challenge me. Whenever I read him, I am reminded of my hypocrisies and moral failures.

Back in 2004 I considered following Berry's advice and abandoning my life and career and moving to a poor small town to become a teacher and grow much of my own food. I didn't do that. I came out, and gay life led in a very different direction. Though I did have friends who did something of the sort.

It is exciting in 2017 to see Berry's influence for good upon our culture--the local food movement, more sustainable agriculture, more awareness about food ethics, the various craft movements, etc.

This is one of the essay collections I had long planned to get to. It seems particularly apt in our Age of Trump, even if the essays are from the 70's and 80's. What Berry was warning us about has come to fruition.

I marked up this volume like my adolescent Bible. I will return to it often.

[Clark Bartholomew · Rating 5 out of 5]

After being recommended Berry a lot by a professor, I finally read this collection of essays by him. And I bought a second collection before I finished, without seeing if there was any overlap. Berry is one of the most interesting essayists (haven’t read his novels yet). He’s a Christian, conservationist, farmer, and English professor. He writes exclusively in pencil on paper, his home is basically self-sustaining, and he can teach a classroom and plow a field with equal adeptness.

If I had to sum up the three main points of the essays in this collection, it would be: place, personhood, and purpose. These essays show the ways in which those three ideas are consistently woven together in everyone’s lives. The titular essay, Berry covers urbanization, productivity, unemployment, and humanity itself (in just 2.5 pages). Leaving you with the question, “Is the obsolescence of human beings now our social goal?” (pg. 125). Berry’s writings, while a few decades old, speak volumes into a time of vocational dissatisfaction, rapid de-ruralization, idolizing productivity, and the trivialization of humans by machines. Highly recommend for anyone wanting to read on these subject from a seemingly curmudgeonly English professor (who actually has a large heart for place and people).

[Jenifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first collection of essays by Wendell Berry I read was Sex, Economy, Community, and Freedom. It's a good thing too, because those essays were easily accessible and, for someone steeped in the current mindset of Organic and Sustainability, pretty easy to agree with.
This collection was more challenging, although because of that I should probably give it five stars. It is likely the parts that made me the least comfortable that I should be most grateful for.
The format is clever - he begins with a series of book reviews, which by way of example begin to answer the book's title question. One in particular, on Edward Abbey, is a meta-critique, setting the reader up to question their assumptions about Berry himself and whether they might have already placed him in a box, atop a high pedestal. The rest of the essays that follow damn near dare you to knock it clear off.
Many fine and provocative points are made, but this one perhaps sums the book up best:
"The great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong. But that is the addict's excuse, and we know that it will not do."

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wendell Berry is my new hero. Most people don't know who this guy is, so I tell them he is like the wise old man of the mountain or something. He writes about rural life, agriculture and culture, but from a farm in Kentucky where he has spent most of his life. He is detached enough to be able to speak prophetically back into culture. And by that I mean he can speak some truth and perspective into our blind areas.

This book is a mix of some really great essays and some others that aren't so relevant or important. A personal favorite is "Why I am Not Going to Buy A Computer" and the follow-up "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine." This book was published in 1990, and it is amazing how ahead of his time Berry was in his assessment of how destructive our way of life can be. I have a hunch that this is not even one of his best books as it was the only one that wasn't checked out of the library. I will soon find out!

[Lmichelleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't met with writing by the inimitable Wendell Berry that didn't strike a deep chord in me. Novel, poems, essays: they are all earthy and sharply piercing, delivering wisdom to the places desperately needed in my own soul.

This collection of essays surprised me. I think I expected to be a bit bored by them. The second half of the collection particularly had me leaning in to not miss a thing, but the whole was excellent. Berry is honest, often brutally so, but not in an unkind way, and often taking part in accepting blame for the problems he sees. I love his idea that rebuilding love of place and local community is how and where we can bring healing to our people and our land. This is an especially important message to ponder during this COVID pandemic. Would and could this have happened on such a scale were we more locally focused communities, diligently caring for our own land and people? How would the impact be different? Food for thought...

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Berry is an Old Testament prophet, irascible and unyielding. Committed to nature, a simple life, manual labor and grudging use of automobiles and airplanes. Environmentalist of the highest order--full of integrity. Some of the essays take perseverance to finish, but worth it. He paints a bleak, realistic picture, but not one without hope.