The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

by Wendell Berry

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]

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]

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

[Emily Davis]

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]

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.

[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]

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]

4.5