The World-Ending Fire

by Wendell Berry

In a time when our relationship to the natural world is ruled by the violence and greed of unbridled consumerism, Wendell Berry speaks out in these prescient essays, drawn from his 50-year campaign on behalf of American lands and communities

Wendell Berry began his life in post-war America as the old times and the last of the old-time people were dying out, and continues to this day in the old ways: a team of work horses and a pencil are his preferred working tools. The writings gathered in The World-Ending Fire are the unique product of a life spent farming the fields of rural Kentucky with mules and horses, and of the rich, intimate knowledge of the land cultivated by this work. These are essays written in defiance of the false call to progress and in defense of local landscapes, essays that celebrate our cultural heritage, our history, and our home.

With grace and conviction, he shows that we simply cannot afford to succumb to the mass-produced madness that drives our global economy—the natural world will not survive it.

Yet he also shares with us a vision of consolation and of hope. We may be locked in an uneven struggle, but we can and must begin to treat our land, our neighbors, and ourselves with respect and care. As Berry urges, we must abandon arrogance and stand in awe.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Philosophy, Poetry, Environment, Nature, Politics

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2017

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

[Berit · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has taken me nearly a year to finish this book, and not because it is hard to get through: Berry actually has a very accessible writing style. No, it has taken me a while because his essays are so full of new (to me) ideas and unusual perspectives that I had to leave some time in between essays to let each of his messages sink in.

Berry is a poet, retired college professor, essayist, and environmentalist. On top of that, he is also a farmer. I knew him mainly as a poet, knew nothing about his farmer life, and was not particularly interested in it, either. Yet, the title of this essay collection drew my attention, and leafing through it I was struck by his eloquent, careful, almost mindful way of talking about the environment. I purchased the book on the spot.

Every since then, I have been reading the essays collected in this volume off and on. At the heart of all of them is a central message: we need to move away from large-scale, industrial living, and learn to live with the land again. That may sound old-fashioned, but Berry shows it is not only possible, but outright necessary. As he says himself (and I'm paraphrasing): how can we hope to do well "in the future" if we do badly in the present? (253).

His essays range from literal calls to action, to meditations on nature and farming, and short essays that read more like opinion pieces. I wasn't crazy about the literal calls to action (such as "The Way of Ignorance"), because I found them too "on the nose." They were at odds with the other pieces, in which he waxes philosophical and meditative without growing too abstract. These, I really loved, and luckily, they formed the bulk of the essays in this volume.

I didn't necessarily agree with everything Berry said. Sometimes, he seemed a bit too self-righteous for my tastes (see: "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer") or downright old-fashioned (see: "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine"). Nonetheless, he writes in such a thoughtful way that even in those moments I felt myself staying open to his point of view, and hearing what he had to say. And in precisely those moments, he seemed to show me something that contradicts most of the things I believe in and stand for, and that I could actually get behind if I followed his train of thought. For example, in the previously mentioned "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine," he argues that industrialization has robbed many people, and especially women, of meaningful work.
Does that make you bristle? I know, I felt the same way.
But then he starts explaining what he means, and says the following (among other things):
"And what are we to say of the diversely skilled country housewife who now bores the same six holes day after day on an assembly line? What higher form of womanhood or humanity is she evolving toward?" (249)
That really made me think. And while I still believe there is such a thing as meaningful work (in fact, I think Berry doesn't dispute that either), I also accept his suggestion that the "country housewife" he speaks of might do very valuable work at home as well, and that this is not pointless. I appreciate those insights, gleaned precisely in the moments I got most annoyed.

Most of the time, though, I was already on the same page, and Berry didn't have to convince me. One of the first essays in the book, on living with the land, really getting to know the soil and the vegetation and farming with the seasons, was beautiful and sensible. I also really enjoyed his emphasis on the value of imagination, religion, and the arts, especially writing. He builds connections between these aspects of life and caring for the land that make sense, but that I hadn't necessarily considered. His essay "Two Minds" is probably the most perfect example of that, and one of my favorites in this collection. Like I said earlier - he is eloquent yet accessible.

My absolute favorite from this book, however, is the essay "Quantity versus Form." It is a short essay, in which he (implicitly) argues that a good life, a life well-lived, is a simple life in which you are at home in your local landscape, help others, and follow your calling. It is a life in which you are in full contact with everything (things, plants, people) around you (225). It is convincing and hard-hitting, and a welcome change from the barrage of articles on productivity. As Berry shows, productivity can also mean something else. Hence - quality versus form.

All in all, this book has been the single-most important influence in pushing me to live more sustainably. I am far from where I need to be, but I am growing vegetables on the balcony, drastically reducing my use of plastic packaging materials (only using them if there is literally nothing else I can wrap stuff in), taking only reusable bags to the store, and am learning a lot more about foraging and native flora. I know, it's next to nothing, but it's a start.

Or, as Berry writes, in an essay on literacy that fits in seamlessly with his talks on the environment:

"It is impractical only by the standards of quick profit and easy power. Longer perspective will show that it alone can preserve in us the possibility of an accurate judgment of ourselves, and the possibilities of correction and renewal. Without it, we are adrift in the present, in the wreckage of yesterday, in the nightmare of tomorrow" (299).

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook-sync-with-ebook
Audio- 16 hours and 30 minutes
Narrated by Nick Offerman

With over 80 Wendell Berry books to choose from— (poetry, fiction, non-fiction, essays)….
I picked “The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry”…essays…(my first Berry book)…..
as a way to gain more understanding about Wendell Berry himself….
and engage my thoughts with the serious concerns of our environmental current issues.

Having read Jane Goodall’s book last year—
“The Book of Hope” ….(passionately loved it), —
in my mind, I thought this book might be a compatible bookend. It was!
Both writers are 87 years old.
Both writers are concerned with the importance of community, and with lessons we can learn from the natural world.

Wendell’s formula for a good life and a good community is pleasingly unoriginal
Slow down, pay attention, do good work, love your neighbors, love your place, stay in your place, settle for less.
Enjoy it more.

Farmer, poet, writer, philosopher …
This book is PACKED FILLED ….educational - intimate - thought- provoking — and engagingly brilliant.

Voices like Wendell Berry are desperately needed!!!

Recommended to all those who value breathing fresh air, drinking clean water, eating local wholesome-soil-rich delicious foods, respect for local farm work, agriculture, enjoy a few laughs, ‘think & pause’ solutions—-and enjoy true-life-nature stories.

Wendell calls himself a relic….yet their is nothing ‘relic’ about the environmental crisis we find ourselves in today.

Great Book….
Great returns for money spent on it.

[Scott Lupo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a tough one for me. I don't want to be overly critical or harsh but two aspects of reading Wendell Berry's works came to me: he is too conservative for my taste and many of his arguments have giant holes that a beginning philosophy student could manage easily. And what sucks about that, is I generally agree with what he has to say about the environment, American capitalism, the importance of conservation, and living a slower lifestyle. But his constant drubbing of "scientists" and "academia" and the "government" is a tired, old argument made by folksy individuals who are unable to see or appreciate the nuances in life. To be honest, I couldn't finish a few of the articles as it just came off as a rural vs. the world (us vs. them) mentality, which drives me nuts. He even admits that he doesn't have the solutions. Yikes! Anybody can complain my friend, it's been all the rage since we evolved into Sapiens.

I did enjoy his writing style for most of the articles. I especially liked his take on the agrarian lifestyle and his life growing up in Kentucky. Although I have not read his fiction works, I bet they are pretty good if they include the rural life in them. His anti-industrialist/anti-American capitalism stances are astute. He realizes it's just another form of colonialism and that it is completely illogical to think a system that depends on infinite growth can survive in a world with finite resources. In essence, we are killing ourselves with the very thing we are told will save us.

Unfortunately, Berry falls short on numerous topics, discussions, and arguments. His religious attitude takes the top spot for me. Any argument using God falls flat and is meaningless. He gives perfunctory acknowledgement that all this land was taken from indigenous peoples and then inserts God. That, my friend, is what colonialists did. He refuses to put blame on the rural people themselves. Who voted for the politicians that think everything is about money and competition and told you to get big or get out? Who keeps voting for those same politicians to this day!? Come on man. He thinks people should be smarter but thinks the education system is terrible. He wants people to slow down and live a more agrarian lifestyle, but it would be impossible to have 350 million people doing that and still lead the world. He derides science way too much for somebody who needs to use it for his lifestyle. I could go on.

In the end, I think Wendell Berry is just another confused human being living in the strangest of times and is having a hard time coming to terms with it and expressing himself clearly. I don't fault him too much. After all, we are just human beings trying to do our best in the circumstances given to us. And as those circumstances continue to get worse with time, it will be interesting to see how people like Wendell Berry react.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

"And so I go to the woods. As I go in under the trees, dependably, almost at once, and by nothing I do, things fall into place. I enter an order that does not exist outside, in the human spaces. I feel my life take its place among the lives — the trees, the annual plants, the animals and the birds, the living of all these and the dead — that go and have gone to make the life of the earth. I am less important than I thought. The human race is less important than I thought. I rejoice in that. My mind loses its urgings, senses its nature, and is free"--Wendell Berry, "A Native Hill," (1968)

Here's a pdf of this 1968 essay from his book, The Art of the Common Place: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (2002):

https://www.sabatinomangini.com/uploa...

I decided to avoid reading too much into the current post-election chaos, take a break from social media, and go back to a tried and true old friend, a wise elder and protector of the Earth, to help me through the darkness: Wendell Berry, who turned 90 in August 2024, someone I began reading in my teens. Novelist, poet, farmer, environmental activist, essayist. In the tradition of Aldo Leopold and Henry David Thoreau. This is a collection of essays chosen by Paul Kingsnorth, who writes the introduction, and it is read by one o fhis fanboys, the comedian Nick Offerman (which unsettled me periodically, to think of this funny guy reading these serious essays, but he reads well).

I liked hearing Berry's voice, too, of course, in this writing, and it centered me, in spite of the fact that in 1968 already in the above essay he sees it is already "probably too late" to radically reorient ourselves to peaceful co-existence with the natural world, which we tend to still see as a collection of resources we plunder for profit. But I read it for his sanity, to bolster mine. I'll admit listening to it made me sad sometimes, since his perspective seems long lost, but I read on.

There's an essay in here I just read on what's terrific and what's not in Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. There's a piece on why he will never buy a computer. Berry was a university scholar and teacher when he decided that yes, he could darn well go home again, and spent the rest of his life farming with horses, no tv ever, living in harmony with the land. Eating as an agricultural act; that is, you know where your food came from, and it is organic. You respect the process and the land it came from. Berry writes passionately about something very few know is crurical to our survival: The steadily eroding topsoil. Topsoil!

Here's just a taste of his writing, again, about taking a boat on the river, and coming home:

“The wind had finally made its way into our clothes, and our feet and hands and faces were beginning to stiffen a little with the cold. And so when home came back in sight we thought it wasn’t too soon. We began to slant across the currents toward the shore. The river didn’t stop to let us off. We ran the bow out onto the path that goes up to my house, and the current rippled on past the stern as though it were no more than the end of a stranded log. We were out of it, wobbling stiff-legged along the midrib on our way to the high ground. With the uproar of the water still in our ears, we had as we entered the house the sense of having been utterly outside the lives we live as usual. My warm living room was a place we seemed to have been away from a long way. It needed getting used to.”

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not quite sure why a book subtitled ‘The Essential Wendell Berry’ contains none of his poems, but rather a collection of very old essays and oft-repeated arguments.

Despite this disappointing aspect, ‘The World-Ending Fire’ is a good preliminary introduction to Berry’s writing and a timely read for the year’s end.

[Gill · Rating 3 out of 5]

'The World-Ending Fire' by Wendell Berry (selected and introduced by Paul Kingsnorth)

3.5 stars/ 7 out of 10

I have read some previous articles by Wendell Berry, and also have come across several references to him, so I was interested in reading this book.

There are more than thirty articles in 'The World-Ending Fire', written by Berry over a period of more than five decades. In my opinion this is more of a book to dip into, than to read from cover to cover. The articles are a mixed bunch, the majority of them linking to Berry, and to his life in Kentucky as a farmer, a writer, and a thinker.

The most interesting article for me was 'Writer and Region', especially the section about Huckleberry Finn. Several of the other articles were also very interesting eg 'Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer', where I also enjoyed reading the responses to the points that Berry had made in this article.

Kingsnorth writes in the introduction about Berry's 'questing thoughtfulness'. I think this phrase is a good summing-up of both the man himself, and the approach articulated in the articles in this volume.

Thank you to Penguin Books (UK) and to NetGalley for an ARC.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Every man is followed by a shadow which is his death – dark, featureless, and mute. And for every man there is a place where his shadow is clarified and is made his reflection, where his face is mirrored in the ground. He sees his source and his destiny, and they are acceptable to him. He becomes a follower of what pursued him. What hounded his track becomes his companion.”

–from the essay A Native Hill (1968)

[Karen Hagerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

So happy to have read these essays from a fellow nature and farm loving Luddite. A bit ponderous in parts but so worth it. Wendell Berry is my new hero.

[Jeanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps Wendell Berry should be required reading at the cusp between two years, that period when we are reflecting on the course of our lives, deciding how the next year may be better. That pause is much needed this year. Berry suggests that we, "Slow down. Pay attention. Do good work. Love your neighbours. Love your place. Stay in your place. Settle for less, enjoy it more" (Paul Kingsworth, p. x). That's not a bad creed to live by.

Berry's goal is larger that this. He does not just ask us to slow down but to live so there is an Earth for our children and grandchildren. Rather than asking, "Is it fast? Is it powerful? Is it a labor saver? How many workers will it replace?" he suggests we should ask, "Can we (and our children) afford it? Is it fitting to our real needs? Is it becoming to us? Is it unhealthy or ugly?" (p. 169). It is for questions like these – as well as his answers – that we should read Berry.

I am a tree hugger, so Berry's questions and answers are compelling – even though I fall far short of the life that Berry imagines for me. I am writing this review using a computer to post on the Internet, having read his essays on my Kindle. He, however, observes: "How could I write conscientiously against the rape of nature if I were, in the act of writing, implicated in the rape [by using a computer]? (p. 234). Berry asks us to think about how we want to live and what sort of world we plan on leaving our children.

That one Holstein cow should produce 50,000 pounds of milk in a year may appear to be marvelous – a miracle of modern science. But what if her productivity is dependent upon the consumption of a huge amount of grain (about a bushel a day), and therefore upon the availability of cheap petroleum? What if she is too valuable (and too delicate) to be allowed outdoors in the rain? What if the proliferation of her kind will again drastically reduce the number of dairy farms and farmers? Or, to use a more obvious example, can we afford a bushel of grain at a cost of five to twenty bushels of topsoil lost to erosion? (p. 171)

Berry does not hold us blameless. We are the problem and can be the solution, as he notes in this quotation from Confucius:

The men of old wanting to clarify and diffuse throughout the empire that light which comes from looking straight into the heart and then acting, first set up good government in their own states; wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families; wanting order in the home, they first disciplined themselves; desiring self-discipline, they rectified their own hearts; and wanting to rectify their hearts, they sought precise verbal definitions of their inarticulate thoughts [the tones given off by the heart]; wishing to attain precise verbal definitions, they set to extend their knowledge to the utmost. (p. 329).

We should think broadly about the impact of our behaviors, but start small. We don't need to change the world, but in accepting responsibility for changing our corner of it, we begin to make a difference.

[north pink · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew when I first picked up this book that there was only a 5% chance that I would rate it anything other than 5 stars. That being said Wendell Berry’s essays are amazing, if you haven’t read any yet I highly recommend you do as soon as possible.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before listening to these essays, I only knew of Wendell Berry as a poet and novelist. These essays are a call to action to laypeople everywhere to think, invest, love, and restore locally. Mostly to plant a vegetable. Berry shows how the first step to ameliorating our own roles in economic disaster is to take care of the earth under our own feet, our own households and land. He calls out the hypocrisy of caring vaguely for the planet while continuing to waste food, energy, clothing, and consume in all sorts of ways that hurt, in the end, specific people, habitats, households, both local and distant. His writing is accessible and clear. He explains how the simple act of growing a single plant for your own food, or composting a single bucket of new dirt, can have a positive impact. While Berry definitely participates in local politics and believes in God, these essays are not political or religious in an officious or polarizing way, his views transcend political affiliation. These essays are also very humble-- at every turn, Berry recognizes the harm he's done, he is not lording ethical superiority over us commercialist consumers, or virtue signaling with his care for nature.

The audio version is read by Nick Offerman, and he totally captures the rebel grandfather tone that these essays are giving.

A few quotes that stood out:

"The natural or normal course of human growing up must begin with some sort of rebellion against one's parents, for it is clearly impossible to grow up if one remains a child. But the child, in the process of rebellion, and of achieving the emotional and economic independence that rebellion ought to lead to, finally comes to understand the parents as fellow humans and fellow sufferers, and in some manner returns to them as their friend, forgiven and forgiving the inevitable wrongs of family life. That is the old norm. The new norm, according to which the child leaves home as a student and never lives at home again, interrupts the old course of coming of age at the point of rebellion, so that the child is apt to remain stalled in adolescence, never achieving any kind of reconciliation or friendship with the parents. Of course, such a return and reconciliation cannot be achieved without the recognition of mutual, practical need." - The Work of Local Culture

"Whereas animals are usually restrained by the limits of physical appetites, humans have mental appetites that can be far more gross and capacious than physical ones. Only humans squander and hoard, murder and pillage, because of notions." - Getting Along with Nature

"The question that must be addressed [...] is not how to care for the planet, but how to care for each of the planet's millions of human and natural neighborhoods, each of its millions of small pieces and parcels of land, each one of which is in some precious way different from all the others. Our understandable wish to preserve the planet must somehow be reduced to the scale of our competence." - Word and Flesh


"How would you describe the difference between modern war and modern industry? Between, say, bombing and strip mining? Or between chemical warfare and chemical manufacturing? The difference seems to be only that in war the victimization of humans is directly intentional, and in industry it is "accepted" as a "tradeoff." Were the catastrophes of Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Exxon Valdez episodes of war, or of peace? They were, in fact, peacetime acts of aggression. Intentional to the extent that their risks were known and ignored." - Word and Flesh

[Teri-K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Berry has been a prophetic voice for many years - what a pity we haven't been listening! I love his use of language and his deep thinking about our place in the world.

"We have lived with the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us."

"We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe."

[Anna Stegeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The standard of the exploiter is efficiency, the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter’s goal is money; the nurturer’s goal is health— his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question far more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? That is: how much can be taken from it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite amount of time?

“Any definition is a limit, which is why the God of Exodus refuses to define Himself “I am that I am.”

[Haley Baumeister · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible essays, and I would expect no less.

Prepare to see every aspect of the modern world in a different light.

And honestly, if you're keeping any aspect of your particular life from being handed over to "the specialists" he will make you feel vindicated. :)

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary: A collection of the essays, mostly focused on local culture, the care of places, and the hubris of technological solutions.

The works of Wendell Berry span the gamut from poetry to novels and short stories to essays, in addition to many articles contributed to various magazines and journals. I have a number of volumes just with his essays. This recently published work draws from them, and I think, does capture the “essential” Wendell Berry as an essayist.

The collection opens with “A Native Hill” and “The Making of a Marginal Farm.” They capture one essential of Wendell Berry–the loving knowledge of and care for a place, as Berry tramps the ground once farmed by his family, and describes his own farm, its features and how it must be cared for to continue to be useful beyond his life. He describes the slow work of rebuilding topsoil, describing a bucket which has collected leaves, twigs, feathers, droppings, and other degree, which have slowly decayed over decades into a few inches of soil. He comes back again and again to the idea that we should give up looking for big solutions, or solutions for someone else to implement. The question is what does our place require to preserve its soil, its life, and thus to sustain us? What must we do to protect the air, the water, the soil, and feed ourselves.

He decries the global food economy in “The Total Economy” in which production and consumption are separated, where farm work becomes servitude done by unseen workers rather than the hard but noble work of feeding both oneself and others through the care for plants and animals living on the soil. He reminds us in “The Pleasures of Eating” of both the joy and act of self-defense of growing, preparing, and being mindful of the sources of our food.

He writes of his own choices to use simpler but sufficient technologies: a good team of horses and various plows, mowers, and other attachments. He gives his reasons for not buying a computer. Hand-written text, edited and typed up by his wife to be sent to his publisher is enough, and he questions how a computer can make it better. He offers standards for technological innovation that should give pause, including that it should be cheaper, as small in scale, do better work, use less energy, and be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence with the requisite tools.

The essay following “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” addresses the firestorm that resulted when people found out about the work his wife did for him and made all kinds of invidious assumptions. He uses it as an occasion, one of several, to talk about domestic economies–of the home being the center of work for husband, wife, and children. In “Economy and Pleasure” he talks about how we have separated our work and our pleasure, recounting the storytelling among a crew during tobacco harvest time, or time with a grand-daughter, who drove a team for the first time, hauling a load of dirt to spread on a barn floor, and her response at the end, “Wendell, isn’t it fun?”

One of his repeated themes is that big tech and big government are not going to solve the problems they’ve created, because all of our challenges reduce to local challenges–this stream, this strip mine, this local community, this school system. He not only advocates for local culture but names the prejudice against country people and questions, what is the best way to farm in all of earth’s “fragile localities”

His penultimate essay, “The Future of Agriculture,” is the most recent in the collection, and in a pithy way sums up his essay-writing career. He offers seven things we must do that are straightforward common sense and concludes:

“This is a agenda that may be undertaken by ordinary citizens at any time, on their own initiative. In fact, it describes an effort already undertaken all over the world by many people. It defines also the expectation that citizens who by their gifts are exceptional will not shirk the most humble services” (p.333).

Berry’s words seem prophetic to me. The disruptions of the pandemic to global supply chains has awakened us to things like computer chip shortages. But a recent problem with infant formula brought to our attention how fraught is our system of producing and transporting food essentials. Climate-change induced droughts in food-producing areas as far flung as California and southern France and Spain should be alarm bells. A threatened rail strike as I write could be catastrophic.

So where do I begin? Perhaps it is to look at converting some of the lawn I mow to gardens. I recall a 15 by 15 garden at our former home and how much food we got out of it, how good it was, and how much fun we had ordering seeds and starting plants under lights. How did I get away from that? We’re coming up on the time to replace a roof as well as some electrical upgrades. Perhaps it is time for solar. Not sure it will pay back in our lives or change things in a big way. But that’s Mr. Berry’s point. It’s the small, local acts of care that extend even beyond our lives that are our “humble service.” Now, if only I can get off this computer…

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a slightly foreboding task. To do some sort of justice to another work of Wendell Berry. The man seems to slow us down, enlarge our world by moving closer to the smallness of our lives. For a book so loaded with the gravity and tragedy of our collective destruction of the world, it’s quite remarkable that Berry leaves me not depressed, but eager to inhabit my place, my life, my family, my community as a deliberately generous, growing, kinder, thriftier presence.

I realised as I completed this book that Berry has chosen to communicate primarily through compact forms - poetry, his Port William meta-short story collection and essays. He’s scattered nuggets of gold, yet there is an overarching sense of “Berry-ness” in my (albeit limited) experience of his work.

In this work, he gets to articulate rather than illustrate his ethos. It is that sense of a life lived locally, of all of us realising our survival involves a connection to the land, whether we live rurally or in a city, whether we think ourselves wholistic or wantonly consume. To live is to need the land. If we outsource that relationship to corporations we must live with the consequences of the corporate mindset, which is the industrialisation of farming, mining and logging for the maximisation of profit. Local knowledge, generational stewardship is the hallmark of the agrarian life and our economy has effectively exterminated rural communities in the pursuit of unsustainable profit.

All that may sound very propositional and alarmist. But Berry’s gift is his measured, humble tone of quiet wisdom that isn’t about winning arguments. He wants to win a future for the land, for family, tradition, a culture handed down, not concocted for fast profit. He’s poetic and tender. He writes of big things in beautiful ways and gently seems to land us back at home, ready to love and serve and work and think and grow where we are.

This series of essays may not be best read, as I did, in a single chunk. It is, after all, a collection of self-contained works. Berry may serve you better over a longer period, perhaps reading an essay or two a week and letting them brew.

But his sweeping treatment of education, agriculture, literature, corporatisation, industrialisation, locality and family have left me full of admiration for the mind and the penmanship of the man. He sees triumph in quietness, in handwriting, in a window sill herb garden, in noticing the rise of the river and the turning of the wheels of life. I’d expect, like me, you could well feel uniquely fuller, refreshed, challenged and inspired by spending time in the presence of Wendell Berry.

And I love that Berry’s Christian faith is an ingrained, uncontrived presence in his work. He never requires the compliance of his reader, is never glib, is honest and real and clear about his Christian convictions but doesn’t let them intrude into the flow of his thoughts without unapologetically explaining their relevance.

I defy you to finish these essays and not notice the birds singing the day home or the way the grass glows in the low sun. I want to listen well and talk less and lean into the moment in front of me in a way that may leave something good behind to be used, cared for, enjoyed and passed on by the next traveller to pass this way.

[Noah Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

10/10 absolutely brilliant!
This is definitely a hard book to review, really each of the 30 plus essays deserve a full review. And I would probably need to re-read this many times to do that... which is not a half bad idea actually.
So here are just a few thoughts:
Berry is one of the best writers alive. He writes with clarity, brevity, weight, humor, charm, urgency and sometimes sass. One thing in particular which stood out to me was his ability to craft stunning or beautiful or even haunting final lines to all of his essays. This is such an underrated art form. Several of these literally made my daw drop, audible exclaim.
I really enjoyed "Why I am Not Going To Buy A Computer" and it's follow up "Feminism, The Body, And The Machine". He is at his most sarcastic and sassy in these because it includes several letters writing in critique of the first essay followed by his responses to these letters. It was quite enjoyable to read... and it made me wonder if computers are really all that necessary for everyday life. (to be fare is suppose I am his idea reader on this topic in particular. I am very primed and predisposed to agree with him)
"A Few Words For Motherhood" is one of the simplest and shortest, and yet it just about brought me to tears listening to it while I stocked potatoes at Trader Joe's.
I could go on and on, but I will limit myself to two more brief comments.
1. I felt that this collection was slightly unbalanced. It was heavy on the "world ending fire" type of polemical essay focused on environmentalism (Berry would hate being lumped into an "ism" but I digress). It left me wanting more of the poetic story driven essays like the one on motherhood i mentioned above, or the first two essays "A Native Hill" and "The Making of a Marginal Farm" or the final essay "The Rise". This I think is where he is at his best, and I want more.
2. I have some a general critique of his overall argument for saving the environment. (Even as I write this, I am fearful that Wendell would somehow see this and then he would make a fool out of me, destroying my critique. But alas I am comforted to remember that he still does not have a computer...)
My critique is simple, probably too simple. It seems to me that Wendell has too high a view of natural human virtue. What I mean by that is an ability to do what is objectively right, apart from grace. He writes extensively about the wrongs and evils committed by people and the implicit complicity of the majority of the population in these evils. And yet he still calls on us societally to do the right thing. Maybe I am just too cynical but I seems naive to expect or even hope for this type of societal change. Humans have always been the same, it is only because of technological advances in the last 200 years that we have been able to expand our destructive habits to a global scale. I am sure he would have a well thought through answer to this but I have not seen it in anything of his that I have read. It seems to me that he is well read enough in the Gospels to see that we can't hope to fix this one ourselves. We need new creation.

[Mandy]

Can you agree with someone and still think they're being a cranky bastard? Berry's stated aim "is to imagine and live out a decent and preserving relationship with the earth," and I can think of no higher goal, but I wish these essays had built on one another instead of trying to convince me of the same basic precepts from beginning to end. Yes, industrial capitalism sucks ass! But in at least some of the essays I wish he'd get out of the abstract and (literally) into the weeds: I wanted to see the joy he gets from farming, hear about the planting and the calving, the hope and the mystery of it. Perhaps I'm not the right audience for his work, because I already agree with him on the same thesis he's had from the 1960s-2010s: that nothing flourishes unless the land does, and that corporatism and unchecked growth can never lead to a whole and sustainable world.

I do love how Berry articulates the absurdity of limitless capitalism by natural standards: there's a moment in "Faustian Economics" that resonated with me, where he says that the industrial obsession with "limitlessness" has obscured our ability to see resources as "inexhaustible." A forest, for example, or a small farm, may not be able to produce an unlimited amount of timber or food at any one time, but when kept in good health it can keep on producing its finite amount forever. The world was able to nourish and sustain humans for millennia, and now, because of how we've exploited it, we calculate our remaining time in decades, maybe centuries. Was it worth it, to trade in forever for all these metric tons of oil and plastic?

Ultimately I appreciate that reading Berry adds to and strengthens this anti-industrialist vocabulary of mine. He makes a great case for why modern corporate power is analogous to colonialist power. I love his attention to the local, the small, the particular. There's a feeling of agency to it—you, the individual, can help make a change.

[Sindre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vi visste det kanskje hele tiden? Så lenge BNP og økonomisk vekst er melodien vi danser til så blir alt prat om bærekraft nettopp det, bare prat. Troen på fortsatt økonomisk vekst og at teknologisk utvikling skal redde oss er en myte det blir vanskeligere og vanskeligere å ta seriøst, men enn så lenge ser myten ut til å leve i beste velgående. Gründere og storkapitalister er fortsatt helgener mange ser opp til. Frk Thunberg blir karikaturen på motstemmene. Hvorfor er det så få andre stemmer? Wendell Berry er en slik stemme. Ja, det er variasjoner over de samme temaene, men det er likevel verdt hver side. Mens økonomen vektlegger skala, standardisering og spesialisering for å oppnå såkalt effektivitet går Berry motsatt vei. Økonomens vei er preget av abstraksjoner og blir dermed virkelighetsfjern. Resultatet av denne tankegangen blir en kynisme i møte med resultatene av den økonomiske tankegangen. Berry sitt perspektiv er derimot hjemstedet. Menneskets evne til omsorg og kjærlighet er begrenset og økonomisk aktivitet bør derfor knyttes til en plass. Et sted. Når en gård blir stor kan ikke bonden vise omsorg for den lenger. I en elv i Chile kan Statkraft gjøre hva de vil, for elva er for langt unna til at noen i Norge bryr seg likevel. Selv om livsgrunnlaget til flere folkegrupper forsvinner. Og selv om det lukter god gammel kolonialisering i lang vei. Alt i bærekraftens navn. Tekstene er fra 1960-tallet og utover, og likevel treffer kritikken om mulig enda bedre idag enn da det ble skrevet. Den mest overbevisende kritikken av moderne kapitalisme jeg har lest på lenge. Hør hør!

[Lucy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. Over the years I’ve heard or read the praises of Wendell Berry, so I was looking forward to finally reading some of his work. This book is a collection of essays ranging from 1968 to 2006, presented in no particular order that I could discern. He was a writer and a farmer; he called himself an agrarian. I suppose he was also a bit of an activist. He wanted to save the Earth - or rather, he wanted to see the Earth saved (other than a lot of words, I’m not sure what action he took). In the 60’s and 70’s, maybe even the 80’s, some of his proposals might have seemed a bit radical - get closer to the land, grow your own food, eat local, get to know the people who raise the meat and vegetables that you eat. Common ideas today. I do agree with his ideas - to an extent. I’m not sure it’s feasible for everyone to give up their desk or factory jobs, buy a few acres and a team or work horses, and successfully grow everything they eat. Who would provide the electricity that he still uses, or build the cars that he admits he can’t get by without? Even he admits that he couldn’t have gotten by without the income from his writing. Is every parent really equipped to home school their children? But in essay after essay, he goes on and on and on about how everyone needs to stop what they’re doing and live their lives the way he does. His tone isn’t that of a dialogue, it’s a diatribe. He just made me angrier and angrier. I’m done with Wendell Berry.

[Libby · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a lot to admire about Wendell Berry. I would have no idea how to be a subsistence farmer. But I hope to take from his example the importance of living the values you teach and doing what you can to make your corner better, no matter how small. God sees all.

[Andy F · Rating 5 out of 5]

This would be required reading if only we as a species were able to collectively realize the error in our ways. Instead it would be met by a considerable population who believe in an inalienable right to consume and destroy, with contempt and derision. Those among us who do believe in what Berry has to say are left to lament our own complicit behaviors.

Berry works tirelessly to understand and point out the faults in our consumptive society and admits where he himself is complicit. Though when placed on a spectrum he will surely be among the least guilty among us in North America.

Will his life’s work be able to affect meaningful change? As usual, I’m cynically doubtful. Since many of these essays have been published we have only accelerated towards our eventual collapse.

I applaud Nick Offerman (audiobook narrator) for amplifying Berry’s work. For surely without Offerman championing this I would not have come across it.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would give this 10 stars if I could.

[Holly Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wendell Berry is for me a 20th and 21st century Thoreau. Deeply meaningful and yet breathtakingly simple. His writing makes me want to sell all my stuff and live in the woods.

[Daniel Giles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not that anyone needs me to confirm this, but the wendell hype is real. my word.

[Caitlyn Hanley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I feel like I need to read every couple of years. It is truly a timeless piece, and a very interesting read considering the political climate and relevance we are currently in. It makes me want to read all of the Wendell Berry books the chapters are from.

[Richard Subber · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re willing to admit that the domain of the intellect is a world you’re willing to live in from time to time, then you’re waiting to discover the prose of Wendell Berry.

“No expert knows everything about every place, not even everything about any place.” (p. 98)

Berry is a novelist, a farmer, and a poet. He cares deeply about preserving our natural environment. He has been described as “a cultural critic.” He quietly conjures the world-ending fire.

You may say “Anybody can be a cultural critic, and everybody is a cultural critic.” Perhaps. Berry is several cuts above your typical wannabe cultural critic. He has insight, he is committed to intensely defending all the stuff that qualifies as “the right thing,” and he makes reading the King’s English a great joy (perhaps not less because he writes with a pen and a paper tablet, disdaining the computer).

The World-Ending Fire is full of literate ruminations on such topics as “Horse-Drawn Tools and the Doctrine of Labor Saving,” “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer,” “Nature as Measure,” and “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine.”

Wendell Berry says: “…but a man with a machine and inadequate culture…is a pestilence. He shakes more than he can hold.” (p. 101)

Wendell Berry encourages us to be shakers and holders.

p.s. I’ll mention that the verities and the points of view that Berry has reduced to writing remind me of the scribbling of H. L. Mencken. Berry does not have Mencken’s savage wit, and Mencken probably never had to wipe cow manure off his boots. However, these men encourage their readers to think hard about stuff that matters.
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com

[Austin Spence · Rating 5 out of 5]

SHEESH. If you want someone who humbly approaches the effect that modernity and forward progress has on us as a people, I implore you to read Wendell.

Agricultural by practice, philosopher of life ethic in mindset, each essay is riddled with an environmentalism that would provoke most people to look and see the goodness nature has to offer. While those themes are found throughout, Berry takes liberty to move through politics, joy, divine proclamations, and what it is like to be ignorant or intelligent.

The essays are introduced and concluded with a more artistic narrative that provides a framework for the man behind the essays criticizing our culture. Awesome read.

[Jordan]

Didn’t realize how frustratingly conservative Berry could be at times, but there are moments to be gleaned from here

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The theme of localized farming and care for nature can wear on the reader (there is a great deal of redundancy in this collection), but no one can deny the beauty of Berry's prose.