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Essays, 1993-2017
This second volume in the Library of America edition of Wendell Berry’s essays presents writings from the latter half of his career, including the entirety of Life Is a Miracle (2000) and forty-two essays from nine other books published from 1993 to 2017: Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993), Another Turn of the Crank (1995), Citizenship Papers (2003), The Way of Ignorance (2005), What Matters? (2010), Imagination in Place (2010), It All Turns on Affection (2012), Our Only World (2015), and The Art of Loading Brush (2017).
In Life Is a Miracle, written in response to E. O. Wilson’s best-selling 1998 book, Consilience, Berry argues that science and the modern, profit-driven industrial and technological regime cannot provide answers to all of our challenges. Instead, “we must learn to think about propriety in scale and design, as determined by human and ecological health. By such changes we might again make our work an answer to despair.” Among the influential and still-provocative essays included in this volume are “In Distrust of Movements,” “Conservationist and Agrarian,” “Secrecy vs. Rights,” “Faustian Economics,” “Imagination in Place,” and his inspiring 2012 Jefferson lecture, “It All Turns on Affection.”
In Life Is a Miracle, written in response to E. O. Wilson’s best-selling 1998 book, Consilience, Berry argues that science and the modern, profit-driven industrial and technological regime cannot provide answers to all of our challenges. Instead, “we must learn to think about propriety in scale and design, as determined by human and ecological health. By such changes we might again make our work an answer to despair.” Among the influential and still-provocative essays included in this volume are “In Distrust of Movements,” “Conservationist and Agrarian,” “Secrecy vs. Rights,” “Faustian Economics,” “Imagination in Place,” and his inspiring 2012 Jefferson lecture, “It All Turns on Affection.”
- GenresEssaysNonfiction
859 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2019
35 people are currently reading
99 people want to read
About the author
Wendell Berry
295 books4,947 followersWendell 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."
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 25, 2023
I confess that I didn't read every essay in this collection. The book contains many essays, covering a period of 24 years, and so the pieces inevitably repeat themselves a little. Also, Berry sometimes goes into more agricultural detail than this city girl can tolerate.
Nevertheless, this book was a 5-star read for me. Wendell Berry's essays are always thoughtful and thought-provoking.
For those unfamiliar with his work, Berry is an agrarian philosopher. He supports a very localized sort of economic organization, in which a community could subsist on its own agricultural production, and where processing - such as sawmills, meat-packing, and grain processing - are also mostly local. He's not against selling excess production outside a community. But he feels very strongly that no community should be completely dependent on global trade for things that are essential for life, mainly food. And he feels very strongly that this way of life is more wholesome for the land and for the people on it.
You might think he could sum that up in one essay. You would be wrong. Berry goes into detail about why agrarianism is more healthful, how distant corporations destroy both the land and the communities dependent on it, and what a more wholesome economic organization would look like.
He also writes thoughtfully on other topics, such as the Gospels, abortion and even the intellectual errors of atheism. His focus is on real lives lived by real human beings in specific places. He doesn't care for abstract religion, abstract global theories, reductionism of any kind, or - especially - big, untested ideas that we are assured will pay off in the future.
While I was reading these essays, I also read in the New York Times that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has completed a survey of life satisfaction among different kinds of workers. The most satisfied workers were farmers and foresters. The least satisfied? People who did exactly the kind of work I did: technology management in large financial institutions, about the most abstract and global kind of work you can do. So Berry's conclusions are at least somewhat borne out by research.
I hasten to add that, although my work was indeed very stressful, I did find my career very satisfying overall. And it was very remunerative. One issue Berry doesn't address is material standards of living. I can buy that a modest, rural life could be more satisfying, but I don't think most people want to give up the material standard of living that globalism has brought us. His response to that would be that our current economic system is unsustainable. Time will tell whether he is correct, but it's not looking good.
This review is long because the book is so rich in ideas. It would not be a 5-star read for everyone. Berry's writing style is very accessible, but it is also idea-dense. The book's appeal is to people who like to think about important issues.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/blog/
Author of The Saints Mistress https://camcatbooks.com/Books/T/The-S...
Nevertheless, this book was a 5-star read for me. Wendell Berry's essays are always thoughtful and thought-provoking.
For those unfamiliar with his work, Berry is an agrarian philosopher. He supports a very localized sort of economic organization, in which a community could subsist on its own agricultural production, and where processing - such as sawmills, meat-packing, and grain processing - are also mostly local. He's not against selling excess production outside a community. But he feels very strongly that no community should be completely dependent on global trade for things that are essential for life, mainly food. And he feels very strongly that this way of life is more wholesome for the land and for the people on it.
You might think he could sum that up in one essay. You would be wrong. Berry goes into detail about why agrarianism is more healthful, how distant corporations destroy both the land and the communities dependent on it, and what a more wholesome economic organization would look like.
He also writes thoughtfully on other topics, such as the Gospels, abortion and even the intellectual errors of atheism. His focus is on real lives lived by real human beings in specific places. He doesn't care for abstract religion, abstract global theories, reductionism of any kind, or - especially - big, untested ideas that we are assured will pay off in the future.
While I was reading these essays, I also read in the New York Times that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has completed a survey of life satisfaction among different kinds of workers. The most satisfied workers were farmers and foresters. The least satisfied? People who did exactly the kind of work I did: technology management in large financial institutions, about the most abstract and global kind of work you can do. So Berry's conclusions are at least somewhat borne out by research.
I hasten to add that, although my work was indeed very stressful, I did find my career very satisfying overall. And it was very remunerative. One issue Berry doesn't address is material standards of living. I can buy that a modest, rural life could be more satisfying, but I don't think most people want to give up the material standard of living that globalism has brought us. His response to that would be that our current economic system is unsustainable. Time will tell whether he is correct, but it's not looking good.
This review is long because the book is so rich in ideas. It would not be a 5-star read for everyone. Berry's writing style is very accessible, but it is also idea-dense. The book's appeal is to people who like to think about important issues.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/blog/
Author of The Saints Mistress https://camcatbooks.com/Books/T/The-S...
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August 1, 2019814.54 B5348b 2019
December 20, 2021
I’m not at all surprised that this collection was full of incredible insight.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews