The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

by Wendell Berry

Genres: Nonfiction

Kindle Edition

Published September 1, 2015

About the author

Wendell Berry was a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet. Closely identified with rural Kentucky, Berry developed many of his agrarian themes in the early essays of The Gift of Good Land (1981) and The Unsettling of America (1977). His attention to the culture and economy of rural communities is also found in the novels and stories of Port William, such as A Place on Earth (1967), Jayber Crow (2000), and That Distant Land (2004).

Berry was an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of the National Humanities Medal and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He was also a 2013 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, from 2014 to his death, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

abridged from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Jake Kellock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook and found myself audibly going “mmm” several times, so he must have made some good points. Some of the people Wendell Berry criticized in this book had funny names (such as former Secretary of Agriculture Rusty Butz), and Nick Offerman did a good job reading these names. 5 stars.

[Laura Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most important books of the modern era. It should be required reading for every law maker and agricultural educator.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a difficult read. I almost didn't make it through. The opening is very focused on the Secretary of Agriculture in the 70s, and if you have a free-market/capitalist disposition, a lot of what he has to say will rub you wrong. But stick with it! He has some incredible insights and criticisms of the current agricultural and economic system that need to be heard. So many of his concerns have only gotten worse in our digital age and as we have entered into a world with worse forms of corporate activity and even fewer people working the land. This books pairs well with Brave New World and its critiques of the machine and experts and removal from nature. More people should read this book and allow it to sink in deeply and change the way they think.

[Emily · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

I listened to this (read so well by Nick Offerman of all people) because I wanted to understand Nathan Coulter (Berry’s first novel) better, by understanding Berry himself better.
I definitely want to get a hard copy of this book, because it was a little too deep to simply listen to. I ended up pausing the book multiple times to make sure I understood what Berry was saying and to jot down quotes that if I’d had a hard copy I would have just underlined.
Berry held a nearly completely negative view of colonialism (sure, the Aztecs may have had a rich agricultural heritage, but come on they were eating people’s hearts, so Cortes’ treatment of them was not entirely out of line [read Columbus and Cortez Conquerors for Christ]), which I mostly disagreed with.

Other than that, I found his arguments compelling and his farming techniques and descriptions beautiful and God-honoring. (He was similar to Salatin in this way, though, whereas Salatin can tend toward preachiness, Berry simply states things how he believes they are and offers more hope without the condemnation.)

I appreciated his main argument that we as Americans have to get away from our gnostic worldview of separation of body and soul. He reasons that when we divide these two, we necessarily cause other divisions - division between food and health, matter and the immaterial, people and other people, people and animals, people and the creation, etc. Next, these divisions lead to competition and violence. (This helped me understand Nathan Coulter and all the troubled relationships and random acts of violence in it.)
He says it is the work of virtue to restore harmony in all these areas.
“The Bible’s aim, as I read it, is not the freeing of the spirit from the world. It is the handbook of their interaction. It says that they cannot be divided, that their mutuality, their unity, is inescapable.”

I will be pondering this book for a while and I’m thankful I read it as it provides helpful context/backdrop for Berry’s novels. Definitely planning to get a physical copy.

[Emily Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. I listened to this as an audiobook that Nick Offerman narrated and that was a perfect narrator pick

2. I came to this on the referral of bell hooks

3. I really wish I could talk to my late grandfather about this book. He was an incredibly bright and progressive guy who was going to be an aeronautical engineer, but a tornado to the family farm during a 3-day lapse in insurance caused him to then spend the rest of his life as a cattle farmer and union factory line worker in rural Iowa. He had several patents for designs of farm equipment material that never sold because they were money & time & equipment savers for small farmers, which is not what Agribusiness pursues. I wish very much I could talk to him about this.

4. Here’s how I felt reading this in 2026!
While I think a lot of this is great, (especially for the 70s) I also think some of this book is unfortunately a little antisocial in a way that becomes then neither practical nor helpful. Specialization (to a degree!) is a feature of any socialized species. Worker bees do it, ants do it, etc. I think the disregard of its benefits (while an understandable counter to its undue dominance,) is what causes things like the antivax movement and loss of funding to public schools and the glorification of Trad Wife homesteading; tools which then are used to further disenfranchise the people I know Berry intended to protect.

I think, while (as bell hooks would confirm) Berry usually does well to dispel the racist & sexist ideology that often accompanies these ideas, (excuse the birth control/family role ideology) these tools are still gonna get into the wrong hands. Just noting because I can’t read this without critically noting that.

I also think a lot of the critical moralizing here is just not how healthy human growth happens, which is fine, this is from the 70s, but I hope modern eyes can take what’s good here without glossing over that.

[Joseph Elefante · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Piercing Criticism of Separation and Scale

Berry, with his typically gorgeous prose, levels a searing critique at modern “agribusiness.” But, more fundamentally, he examines our culture of separation: spirit from mind, mind from body, body from earth, etc. He also questions our ignorance of the consequences of scale, and our assumption that “more” - technology, production, profit - is always better. With “Unsettling,” Berry inspires us to think about our relationship and responsibility to the land, our food, and each other. This is among the best and most timeless critiques of modernity I have ever read. I couldn’t recommend this book more highly.

[Mike Troiano · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed the way I see the world, and our role in it. It's a masterpiece of deep thinking and profound insight, so dense that the written version can be challenging at times. Fortunately the Nick Offerman-performed Audible version is available, and it is an unqualified masterpiece, which - as Offerman himself opined after Berry's recent death - should be required reading for all.

[Derek Seifert]

One of the most thought provoking books about society, culture, and how the American government treats land/agriculture issues. A must read for anyone looking to understand the cultural ethic of rural America.

[Matthew McKibben · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deeply and thoroughly written philosophical, personal, and political book about humanity’s connection to land and agriculture. Highly recommend. Needed now more than ever but also reads like a prophecy written by a prophet unable to stop what was and what’s to come.

[Rocky Conly · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5