What do you think?
Rate this book
The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice
Wendell Berry has never been afraid to speak up for the dispossessed. The Need to Be Whole continues the work he began in The Hidden Wound (1970) and The Unsettling of America (1977), demanding a careful exploration of this hard, shared truth: The wealth of the mighty few governing this nation has been built on the unpaid labor of others.
Without historical understanding of this practice of dispossession—the displacement of Native peoples, the destruction of both the land and land-based communities, ongoing racial division—we are doomed to continue industrialism’s assault on both the natural world and every sacred American ideal. Berry writes, “To deal with so great a problem, the best idea may not be to go ahead in our present state of unhealth to more disease and more product development. It may be that our proper first resort should be to history: to see if the truth we need to pursue might be behind us where we have ceased to look.” If there is hope for us, this is it: that we honestly face our past and move into a future guided by the natural laws of affection. This book furthers Mr. Berry’s part in what is surely our country’s most vital conversation.
Without historical understanding of this practice of dispossession—the displacement of Native peoples, the destruction of both the land and land-based communities, ongoing racial division—we are doomed to continue industrialism’s assault on both the natural world and every sacred American ideal. Berry writes, “To deal with so great a problem, the best idea may not be to go ahead in our present state of unhealth to more disease and more product development. It may be that our proper first resort should be to history: to see if the truth we need to pursue might be behind us where we have ceased to look.” If there is hope for us, this is it: that we honestly face our past and move into a future guided by the natural laws of affection. This book furthers Mr. Berry’s part in what is surely our country’s most vital conversation.
20 pages, Audible Audio
Published October 25, 2022
256 people are currently reading
2163 people want to read
About the author
Wendell Berry
292 books4,893 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."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 149 reviews
December 14, 2022
I don’t think I’ve ever read a whole book of Wendell Berry’s non-fiction until now, but this was easily one of my favorite books I read this year. Berry is humble and wise and gracious and careful in his writing in ways I’ve rarely encountered. I may not agree with him at every point, but (as my wife suggested when I’d finished) I do believe I am a better person as a result of reading a work written out of such love and concern for what is good and true.
August 26, 2022
A crucial book, truly. Written with a clarity and candor that can probably only come from 88 years on earth. No matter your political beliefs or cultural lens, something in here will feel like a record-scratch. Something we’re “not supposed to say”, which Berry freely acknowledges - saying that friends have begged him not to include certain sections for what they perceive it could mean for his reputation, advice he has understood and declined to follow, because he views his responsibility is to the truth as he sees it. So you have to keep going past the record scratches. There is plenty of stuff I would have said differently, or still think he’s coming at a topic from a particular viewpoint that he just can’t quite see around. But he knows that. The point is to start and have a conversation, as you would with a neighbor.
January 18, 2023
I am a devoted follower of Mr. Berry, although mostly confined to his essays and poetry. It pains me to say that this book disappointed me on many levels. I have no quibble with his general conclusions about the ills of the present day, all of which have been laid bare in his previous essays. But this book takes up a specific topic - racism and it’s history and effects - without really engaging the topic. Instead, we get selective nuance about how slavery, certain confederate generals and the South weren’t so bad, combined with a lazy whataboutism. Even if his points on these subjects are true, they seem irrelevant to the topic, and oddly defensive and rambling. Berry gives himself the credit of authenticity by having knowledge and experience tied to his surroundings, but assigns all outsiders only fake knowledge earned via social media and alike. This is unfair and comes across as condescending.
I believe Wendell’s point in writing the book, when you finally arrive at it, is a true and important one. But the book does a poor job taking the reader there.
I believe Wendell’s point in writing the book, when you finally arrive at it, is a true and important one. But the book does a poor job taking the reader there.
January 20, 2023
In the essay "Solving for Pattern" - which you really ought to read - from the collection The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural, Wendell Berry describes three types of solutions, two bad and one good. Of the first two, he writes "Such solutions always involve a definition of the problem that is either false or so narrow as to be virtually false. ... The whole problem must be solved, not just some handily identifiable and simplifiable aspect of it." It is no wonder, that in this book addressing "the race problem", he defines that problem in expansive terms and writes in pursuit of commensurate solutions.
I think this book is authentic Wendell Berry at his finest. Compared to the vitriol and divisive tribalism characterizing cultural conversation today, he seems to be speaking a foreign tongue. It is one I think we would all do well to learn. He writes in a way that seeks clarity rather than victory. He writes in pursuit of peace rather than aiming to score points against his opponents.
On the notion of opponents, I will surmise that everyone will find things in this book to disagree strongly with. It's somewhat incredible to me that Berry himself could hold all of these positions that appear to be in tension with one another. At the very least, he seems not to fit into any of the typical partisan categories we are used to. As such, I think he is uniquely able to define the terms for a conversation that seeks not to divide our nation into winners and losers, but to navigate a course forward for us all.
From the title, you can learn a few of these terms, such as "whole" (referring to the connection between people and with their place) and "patriotism" ("love for one's actual country or the land under one's feet") which he opposes to "nationalism" ("allegiance just short of worship to a political idea or ideal and to a government"). My favorite chapters are those called Sin and Forgiveness which introduce those very helpful categories into the conversation. I think the term most often used, and perhaps the best summary of his proposed solution, is love. And love fits the definition of the third type of solution in "Solving for Pattern": "that which causes a ramifying series of solutions."
This was my second read of this fine book (through the excellent audiobook narrated by Nick Offerman), but I expect it won't be my last. There is no way in such a short writeup to do any amount of justice to such a sprawling and yet thoughtful offering by Wendell Berry. I hope you'll read it.
I think this book is authentic Wendell Berry at his finest. Compared to the vitriol and divisive tribalism characterizing cultural conversation today, he seems to be speaking a foreign tongue. It is one I think we would all do well to learn. He writes in a way that seeks clarity rather than victory. He writes in pursuit of peace rather than aiming to score points against his opponents.
On the notion of opponents, I will surmise that everyone will find things in this book to disagree strongly with. It's somewhat incredible to me that Berry himself could hold all of these positions that appear to be in tension with one another. At the very least, he seems not to fit into any of the typical partisan categories we are used to. As such, I think he is uniquely able to define the terms for a conversation that seeks not to divide our nation into winners and losers, but to navigate a course forward for us all.
From the title, you can learn a few of these terms, such as "whole" (referring to the connection between people and with their place) and "patriotism" ("love for one's actual country or the land under one's feet") which he opposes to "nationalism" ("allegiance just short of worship to a political idea or ideal and to a government"). My favorite chapters are those called Sin and Forgiveness which introduce those very helpful categories into the conversation. I think the term most often used, and perhaps the best summary of his proposed solution, is love. And love fits the definition of the third type of solution in "Solving for Pattern": "that which causes a ramifying series of solutions."
This was my second read of this fine book (through the excellent audiobook narrated by Nick Offerman), but I expect it won't be my last. There is no way in such a short writeup to do any amount of justice to such a sprawling and yet thoughtful offering by Wendell Berry. I hope you'll read it.
January 19, 2023
The book Wendell Berry never should have written.
February 25, 2023
I love Berry's fiction and I find much even in this worthy of contemplation, but it's a deeply flawed book. First, Berry's thought. As a celebration of community, as a reminder of our need to take care of the land, there is much to admire. And if one is to be a thinking Christian I believe one must ultimately reckon with Christian pacifism in the vein of Dr. King, Tolstoy, and Wendell Berry; even if one ultimately decides that the New Testament can sanction, or at least leave a place for, a just war tradition, there is much to support Christian pacifism in the life and teachings of Jesus.
But. Berry's disdain for capitalism and for the incidents of industrial development - virtually all of them - veers into the irrational. He cannot even fathom the contradictions that exist, the fact that the evils he outlines - some real, some exaggerated - are set against the precipitous decline in abject poverty and the fact that malnutrition and hunger have been replaced by obesity as THE signature health consequence of American poverty. And his celebration of the Jefferson idyll of small freeholders ignores the fact that it's been the norm for the tiniest of slivers of human history throughout much of the world, and that serfdom and other species of coercion have reigned for far longer.
His book purports to be about race relations and race prejudice, but it struggles there too. He is undoubtedly correct that in many tightknit farming communities race relations have been better than elsewhere, but he is blind - naive perhaps - in thinking that his border state community was especially typical. Industrial farming did not drive the Great Migration and to the extent that industrial capitalism did it owed more to the expectation that northern cities were, despite de facto (sometimes de jure) segregation and prejudice and the vicissitudes of the labor market, far more welcoming and far less dangerous to African Americans than were the rural communities of the Deep South they left behind. In his own Kentucky, those fleeing the land were saying goodbye to Berry and his kin - and we should treat his description of them and their kindness with charity - but they were also saying goodbye to de jure school segregation.
And he is undoubtedly correct to say that slavery and race prejudice took a toll on white communities, especially poor white communities, as well as black, but the constant comparison of wage labor to chattel slavery is insulting. He is right that we are and have long been too cavalier in treating the human consequences of economic statistics as just that, statistics, but using "wage slavery" in comparison to human bondage is a terrible analogy. At its most base and exploitative, there is still no comparison between a factory that can throw you out of work and an owner who can sell your children out of state and have sex with (rape) your wife with impunity.
Berry talks of the need for charity in engaging the argument's of one's opponents - seeking clarity rather than victory, but his treatment of the pro-life movement is a silly caricature and he sees greed lurking behind many decisions that have had more salutary impacts than he allows. And while he is right that many of the attendant ills faced by black communities were/are mirrored in those of their white counterparts, but the case for special pleading - at least historically - for those black communities based on contemporary ills.
Berry's apologia for the South in the Civil War is not completely without merit. The Confederate foot soldier was, by and large, fighting for kith and kin and a plot of land, and it bears remembering that the Virginia to which Robert E. Lee pledged his loyalty was 240 or so years old, America barely a third as venerable. His discussion of patriotism versus nationalism in that context felt a little flat, but in a 20th Century context it makes more sense. Still, the moral equivalence between a cause that was, at its core, about secession to preserve and extend an institution and a cause that sought to defend the union and ultimately to limit and then end slavery is nonsense; the Civil War may have hastened industrialism, but it did not begin the trend, and in 1865 the North was still far closer to his smallholder idyll than was the South.
There are kernels of wisdom in Berry's work. The demise of community - in all its forms - has much to do with our rootlessness and the individual lack of purpose that drives so many contemporary ills. And we do need to do a better job of stewarding the land and respecting the people who work it and live on it. But his policy prescriptions are obtuse and fantastical, and he sees unalloyed greed at work where the balance sheet is in fact a lot closer, where positives have accompanied negatives. As a lament for what we've lost, sure (to a point). As a path forward, it's simply not one.
But. Berry's disdain for capitalism and for the incidents of industrial development - virtually all of them - veers into the irrational. He cannot even fathom the contradictions that exist, the fact that the evils he outlines - some real, some exaggerated - are set against the precipitous decline in abject poverty and the fact that malnutrition and hunger have been replaced by obesity as THE signature health consequence of American poverty. And his celebration of the Jefferson idyll of small freeholders ignores the fact that it's been the norm for the tiniest of slivers of human history throughout much of the world, and that serfdom and other species of coercion have reigned for far longer.
His book purports to be about race relations and race prejudice, but it struggles there too. He is undoubtedly correct that in many tightknit farming communities race relations have been better than elsewhere, but he is blind - naive perhaps - in thinking that his border state community was especially typical. Industrial farming did not drive the Great Migration and to the extent that industrial capitalism did it owed more to the expectation that northern cities were, despite de facto (sometimes de jure) segregation and prejudice and the vicissitudes of the labor market, far more welcoming and far less dangerous to African Americans than were the rural communities of the Deep South they left behind. In his own Kentucky, those fleeing the land were saying goodbye to Berry and his kin - and we should treat his description of them and their kindness with charity - but they were also saying goodbye to de jure school segregation.
And he is undoubtedly correct to say that slavery and race prejudice took a toll on white communities, especially poor white communities, as well as black, but the constant comparison of wage labor to chattel slavery is insulting. He is right that we are and have long been too cavalier in treating the human consequences of economic statistics as just that, statistics, but using "wage slavery" in comparison to human bondage is a terrible analogy. At its most base and exploitative, there is still no comparison between a factory that can throw you out of work and an owner who can sell your children out of state and have sex with (rape) your wife with impunity.
Berry talks of the need for charity in engaging the argument's of one's opponents - seeking clarity rather than victory, but his treatment of the pro-life movement is a silly caricature and he sees greed lurking behind many decisions that have had more salutary impacts than he allows. And while he is right that many of the attendant ills faced by black communities were/are mirrored in those of their white counterparts, but the case for special pleading - at least historically - for those black communities based on contemporary ills.
Berry's apologia for the South in the Civil War is not completely without merit. The Confederate foot soldier was, by and large, fighting for kith and kin and a plot of land, and it bears remembering that the Virginia to which Robert E. Lee pledged his loyalty was 240 or so years old, America barely a third as venerable. His discussion of patriotism versus nationalism in that context felt a little flat, but in a 20th Century context it makes more sense. Still, the moral equivalence between a cause that was, at its core, about secession to preserve and extend an institution and a cause that sought to defend the union and ultimately to limit and then end slavery is nonsense; the Civil War may have hastened industrialism, but it did not begin the trend, and in 1865 the North was still far closer to his smallholder idyll than was the South.
There are kernels of wisdom in Berry's work. The demise of community - in all its forms - has much to do with our rootlessness and the individual lack of purpose that drives so many contemporary ills. And we do need to do a better job of stewarding the land and respecting the people who work it and live on it. But his policy prescriptions are obtuse and fantastical, and he sees unalloyed greed at work where the balance sheet is in fact a lot closer, where positives have accompanied negatives. As a lament for what we've lost, sure (to a point). As a path forward, it's simply not one.
January 8, 2023
In response to Black Lives Matter, Berry chose to write an All Lives Matter book. And he goes all in too! It reads like it was written in isolation. He needed some conversation partners to help him frame his ideas to 2022. MAGA is bad, even if it's the idilic rural past, which seems to be Berry's version of MAGA. Please read Robert E. Lee and Me by Ty Seidule, history professor at West Point Military Academy.
A central argument of this book is Berry's obsession to help people understand rural culture. Sometimes it seems like he forgets a lot of us, people of color and immigrants, are very familiar with rural America. It's where we've lived. Berry defends Robert E. Lee saying he fought against the US Army because his friends & family were in the south and he couldn't bring himself to fight against his family. But how about the heroic white southerners who went against their families to free slaves and end slavery?? How do you defend a guy who not only ended up fighting against the country he once swore to defend, the United States of America, but led the rebels who did it!
A central argument of this book is Berry's obsession to help people understand rural culture. Sometimes it seems like he forgets a lot of us, people of color and immigrants, are very familiar with rural America. It's where we've lived. Berry defends Robert E. Lee saying he fought against the US Army because his friends & family were in the south and he couldn't bring himself to fight against his family. But how about the heroic white southerners who went against their families to free slaves and end slavery?? How do you defend a guy who not only ended up fighting against the country he once swore to defend, the United States of America, but led the rebels who did it!
January 28, 2023
A surprisingly, almost shockingly, good book. When I saw Berry had written on prejudice, I sort’ve rolled my eyes. However, this book is worth the read. You will be shaking your head in dismay one minute, and then nodding it in agreement the next. It is already receiving polarizing reviews, and it’s probably worth reading almost because of it. As a conservative Christian, a pastor no less, I can’t recommend it for Berry’s Scriptural exegesis, but he will certainly challenge both sides of the modern stance on prejudice. Read it. Get one for a neighbor on the other side of the political aisle and read it with them.
November 20, 2023
If you’ve never read Wendell Berry, you should immediately remedy this deficiency, and this book would be a great place to start.
The chapter called “Forgiveness” is just stunning. They should reprint and sell this chapter as a separate book so it would reach a wider audience. Maybe combine it with the previous chapter, “Sin,” so the book would be 144 pages and the title would be “Sin and Forgiveness.” And the chapter “Work” could also be a separate 156-page book. I’d give each of those books 5 stars.
There’s just too much great material here for me to adequately summarize. Kevin does a great job in his review. And I also copied a passage from his chapter on Forgiveness in my review of the Iliad.
The chapter called “Forgiveness” is just stunning. They should reprint and sell this chapter as a separate book so it would reach a wider audience. Maybe combine it with the previous chapter, “Sin,” so the book would be 144 pages and the title would be “Sin and Forgiveness.” And the chapter “Work” could also be a separate 156-page book. I’d give each of those books 5 stars.
There’s just too much great material here for me to adequately summarize. Kevin does a great job in his review. And I also copied a passage from his chapter on Forgiveness in my review of the Iliad.
June 21, 2024
I have so many thoughts about this book.
First of all, this is the most I have ever disagreed with Berry. His reading of the civil war is very one sided and ignores a lot of core factors to the war. I found it frustrating but still enlightening. It does seem like most of the southerners who fought in the war saw the war as defending their land. I just can’t get past the fact that part of that land-identity was slavery. What I do believe is that the war was not the best solution to the problem of slavery but the south really didn't leave that up to anyone to decide.
What I really appreciated about this book, and always appreciate about Mr. Berry, is his clarity. I have seriously never read a clearer thinker and communicator. I understand and am sympathetic to his views even when I disagree. He seems to understand how to speak as one of the people and yet still in educated and educating language.
Another aspect of this book that I greatly appreciated was his adoption of the Christian language and identity. In his old age he has become much less wary of using the traditional language and appellations of the Christian faith. This leads to a unique appropriation of the language of the scriptures to American life. I found all of his section on the Ten Commandments and the commandments of Jesus clarifying.
I didn't love this book but I do love Mr. Berry. Even with my distaste for some of his views I have been thinking deeply about things I normally ignore because of this book. I truthfully believe that every white liberal like me should read this book.
3.7/5
First of all, this is the most I have ever disagreed with Berry. His reading of the civil war is very one sided and ignores a lot of core factors to the war. I found it frustrating but still enlightening. It does seem like most of the southerners who fought in the war saw the war as defending their land. I just can’t get past the fact that part of that land-identity was slavery. What I do believe is that the war was not the best solution to the problem of slavery but the south really didn't leave that up to anyone to decide.
What I really appreciated about this book, and always appreciate about Mr. Berry, is his clarity. I have seriously never read a clearer thinker and communicator. I understand and am sympathetic to his views even when I disagree. He seems to understand how to speak as one of the people and yet still in educated and educating language.
Another aspect of this book that I greatly appreciated was his adoption of the Christian language and identity. In his old age he has become much less wary of using the traditional language and appellations of the Christian faith. This leads to a unique appropriation of the language of the scriptures to American life. I found all of his section on the Ten Commandments and the commandments of Jesus clarifying.
I didn't love this book but I do love Mr. Berry. Even with my distaste for some of his views I have been thinking deeply about things I normally ignore because of this book. I truthfully believe that every white liberal like me should read this book.
3.7/5
January 3, 2025
I agreed with a lot and disagreed with a good deal. Regardless, Wendell Berry is a singular thinker and writer. When he speaks, we should listen. He is irreplaceable.
March 2, 2023
This book was exhausting. I received many recommendations from friends and other authors to read Wendell Berry. Only after I was three quarters through did I read the critics who suggest this is his worst book. Some portions are beautiful and quotable and those moments save this from my first 1-star review. Unfortunately, most of it is Berry’s cherry-picking of information to rail against those things and people that he thinks have wronged him or deserve his ire. He hodgepodges quotes and information together with no sense of relevancy and then says, “Obviously we can see….”
It’s clear he has some axes to grind and he’s going to grind them all. The result is similar to a high schooler who was tasked with a research paper, decided before he started what the result should be, and found the quotes and studies to support his already-held position while ostracizing those who believe the opposite. The result is a wordy rewriting of Civil War history to tell us why “the black slaves were actually happier, insomuch as they were slaves, then they were after they were removed from the land.” Really? An 88-year old white guy can be an authority on this? Sorry. He still isn’t. Of course, by calling him out on this, he has already lumped me into the category of Northern Urbanite with a bias against the rural South.
He makes comments, only to build a defense, as if he knows he’ll be called out on his pontificating without support. Maybe his publisher required a book from him. Maybe he needed the money. Maybe he just wanted to tell us all to “get off his lawn.”
It’s clear he has some axes to grind and he’s going to grind them all. The result is similar to a high schooler who was tasked with a research paper, decided before he started what the result should be, and found the quotes and studies to support his already-held position while ostracizing those who believe the opposite. The result is a wordy rewriting of Civil War history to tell us why “the black slaves were actually happier, insomuch as they were slaves, then they were after they were removed from the land.” Really? An 88-year old white guy can be an authority on this? Sorry. He still isn’t. Of course, by calling him out on this, he has already lumped me into the category of Northern Urbanite with a bias against the rural South.
He makes comments, only to build a defense, as if he knows he’ll be called out on his pontificating without support. Maybe his publisher required a book from him. Maybe he needed the money. Maybe he just wanted to tell us all to “get off his lawn.”
Read
November 20, 2022I would not recommend this as a starting point for the written works of Wendell Berry. It is, in many respects, the last book on the shelf and a sort of logical conclusion to Wendell’s key themes in his writing life. For this reason, anyone who has sat at his feet on more than one occasion should consider wrestling with this book.
December 4, 2024
I have told many friends that, among all the extra-Biblical authors, Wendell Berry’s voice is the most prophetic for our day.
“The Unsettling of America” & “People, Land, and Community” are Berry’s works from the 70s that remain astoundingly relevant to 2024’s knottiest social and economic questions.
“The Need to be Whole” is the reexamination & continuation of many familiar matters in his authorship, yet this work is taken up with a few incremental decades of historical insights gathered & contemporary happenings to comment on.
The American Civil War and contemporary race relations serve as primary cases for examining patriotism, the history of prejudice, and the American people’s many wounds because of them.
As all prophetic voices speak from outside of a world into its inhabitants, Berry speaks to the industrial West as an agrarian. As Thoreau was an outsider and dissenter of the state, Berry detests industrialism and its war-based economy.
This is a grand, sweeping work. One that can only be written near the end of a long, thoughtful, prayerful life.
Even if you have earnestly searched for answers within the topics of race, justice, war, peace, and economy over the last few years, this work will raise entirely new questions to you which may or may not lead to resolution. These questions will certainly lead to long, nuanced synthesis of many things we perceive to be simple and unrelated to one another.
He is the great American author. I will say no more. Read it when you’re ready.
“The Unsettling of America” & “People, Land, and Community” are Berry’s works from the 70s that remain astoundingly relevant to 2024’s knottiest social and economic questions.
“The Need to be Whole” is the reexamination & continuation of many familiar matters in his authorship, yet this work is taken up with a few incremental decades of historical insights gathered & contemporary happenings to comment on.
The American Civil War and contemporary race relations serve as primary cases for examining patriotism, the history of prejudice, and the American people’s many wounds because of them.
As all prophetic voices speak from outside of a world into its inhabitants, Berry speaks to the industrial West as an agrarian. As Thoreau was an outsider and dissenter of the state, Berry detests industrialism and its war-based economy.
This is a grand, sweeping work. One that can only be written near the end of a long, thoughtful, prayerful life.
Even if you have earnestly searched for answers within the topics of race, justice, war, peace, and economy over the last few years, this work will raise entirely new questions to you which may or may not lead to resolution. These questions will certainly lead to long, nuanced synthesis of many things we perceive to be simple and unrelated to one another.
He is the great American author. I will say no more. Read it when you’re ready.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 22, 2025
I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again: Wendell Berry’s patriotism is my preferred brand of patriotism. I never feel prouder to be an American than when I read his non-fiction and know that I come from the same country that he does. That may be the extent to which we are connected, but I’ll take it.
March 23, 2023
What a slog. I normally really enjoy Berry's takes, especially regarding environmental conservation. I would've never called him myopic. Until this book. I like when he talks about "being neighborly" and about the need for close in-person community and interaction. But then he cherry picks so many topics about racism and history... it's exhausting.
February 6, 2023
A beautifully written collection of opinions that fall apart upon being considered with an interpretation of historical fact less narrow than the author's.
Some excellent points about the nature and importance of work are interspersed with apologism for the Confederacy, frequent references to "the two races", anti-science rhetoric, and apocryphal/fictional stories about people without the freedom of choice taking pride in their work.
I genuinely wanted to like this, and there were elements that I did enjoy, but the number of bad takes far outnumbered the good.
Some excellent points about the nature and importance of work are interspersed with apologism for the Confederacy, frequent references to "the two races", anti-science rhetoric, and apocryphal/fictional stories about people without the freedom of choice taking pride in their work.
I genuinely wanted to like this, and there were elements that I did enjoy, but the number of bad takes far outnumbered the good.
February 14, 2025
Wendell Berry confesses in The Need to Be Whole that several friends advised him not to write this book. This is a point Dorothy Wickenden acknowledges in her generally reverent New Yorker profile, where she likens Berry to the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. To my mind he’s an Amos: a farmer and agrarian first, with a keen eye for social justice. Amos rebuked those who had no love for their neighbors. For Wendell Berry, few sins are greater than that one.
Because of what I’d heard about this book (from friends and reviews), I approached it with great trepidation. It sat on my shelf for over two years before I finally tackled it. It is my least favorite Berry book, both for what he says and how he says it ... not to mention the length he says it with (it clocks in at over 500 pages with the Index).
The greatest insight this book offered me is this: Because the work of enslaved people was physical labor deemed beneath their owners, slavery degraded manual labor – specifically (this being Wendell Berry) the work of farmers – and justified violent exploitation of the earth and its natural resources.
Where things go wobbly is when Berry draws a moral equivalency between racial prejudice and what I’ll call city prejudice (or possibly “land prejudice”) – the condescension Berry feels directed at him and others living in rural communities. In discussing Confederate monuments, Berry writes, “I would like to qualify myself a little by speaking of a monument that directly offends me”: a statue of James B. Duke, which Berry comes “face-to-face with” at the university that bears Duke’s name. “As the founder of the American Tobacco Company,” Berry writes, Duke represents to Berry the force that “had so gravely damaged my home country and people.” He continues, “This man embodied and enacted the ‘right’ of concentrated wealth to prey upon and destroy the people and the land community of rural America, a ‘right’ that members of my family have done all in their power to oppose for the last hundred years.” After standing before “my enemy in his imperturbable bronze,” Berry feels “troubled” but “also clarified,” a stew of emotions that culminates with the statement, “I do not have the least wish for that statue to be removed or for Duke University to change its name.”
You can see where this is going: If Berry can feel “clarified” by confronting a statue of his enemy, others might have the same experience by considering Confederate monuments. This false equivalency becomes a template Berry uses throughout; prejudice against those who work the land, he would have you believe, is -- if not the exact same, then nearly as significant as -- prejudice against people based on their skin color. Except it's not. One is a way of life. The other is inherent to one’s identity.
Though Berry goes on to note that some people at Duke have qualms about its name because James’s father Washington owned slaves, Berry performs an evasive two-step: “The exploiters of black people have almost predictably exploited white people also. When both races are exploited, black people are likely to suffer disproportionately because of their color, but of course both races suffer.”
Kirkus Review labeled this exactly what it is: “This digressive, at times exhausting book is at best a well-meaning, eloquent utopian plea to abandon urbanity; at worst, it lapses into all-lives-matter rhetoric insisting that slavery and the Confederacy, while wrongheaded, were misunderstood.”
Berry acknowledges early in the book he is “not a historian” and that “what I say about history in these chapters is not the product of systematic research. I am an amateur.” This disclosure does not excuse specious reasoning like Berry’s flippant dismissal of the inconvenient fact that these monuments “were erected in the early twentieth century, decades after Appomattox, their opponents suggesting that they were erected only in support of Jim Crow, to intimidate black people at that particular time.” This “suggestion” is, to me, an unassailable fact. But Berry equivocates. “I would not rule out the involvement of such a motive on the part of some people at any time. It is true that the motives of human beings are often bad and often mixed. It is also true that sometimes their motives are more good than bad, and sometimes they are good. … Fair-mindedness and good sense ought to advise us that the worst thing we can find out or conjecture is not necessarily the truest, also that all particulars are not necessarily explainable by generalizations.” That passage highlights two problem with the book: its logical inconsistency, and its baggy prose. The two in fact go hand-in-hand as Berry tries to carve out nuance that obfuscates, rather than clarifies, the subject at hand.
His greatest historical misstep is in fashioning a mythical Robert E. Lee out of the actual man. (This is the part Wickenden said made Berry’s family and friends especially uneasy; Berry himself acknowledges, “In conversations with friends peripheral to the making of this book over several years, I have received a number of warnings ... [that] above all, I could not speak of Robert E. Lee with any interest in understanding him or with any sympathy.”)
There are many problematic parts of Berry’s treatment of Lee, so it’s hard to pick the most emblematic one. I’ll offer this: “[Lee’s] significance for my purpose in this book is that he embodied and suffered, as did no other prominent person of his time, the division between nation and country, nationalism and patriotism, that some of us in rural America are feeling at present.” Berry admires Lee as “he was above all a Virginian" -- understandable because Berry is above all a Kentuckian. Berry believes Lee had no choice but to fight for the South since “the need to go with your people is a part of history because it is a part of human nature, and that, with care, it can be imagined and understood,” adding “I see Robert E. Lee’s choice of his native place and his people as commendable and in the long run indispensable.” Thus “the Civil War itself belongs to the larger tragedy of our abuse of our country.”
Berry cites Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s Reading the Man in his refashioning of the historical Lee. That’s the same book Adam Serwer quotes in his blistering essay “The Myth of the Kindly General Lee”, which makes me wonder how two men could read the same book and arrive at such divergent conclusions. “White supremacy was one of Lee’s most fundamental convictions,” Serwer writes. “Lee counseled others to hire white labor instead of the freedmen, observing ‘that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and whenever you find a white man, you see everything around him improving.” Berry says Lee “suffered” the division between nation and country, painting him as a passive figure. Serwer asserts, “To describe this man as an American hero requires ignoring the immense suffering for which he was personally responsible, both on and off the battlefield.”
I do not believe Berry is a white supremacist, which Serwer labels anyone who defends Lee. The Need to Be Whole acknowledges throughout the past and present reality of race prejudice and structural racism. But I hope the section above shows how Berry muddies the issue rather than clarifies it by conflating personal grievances with those others have suffered because of their race.
Late in the book Berry quotes from Pete Daniel's Dispossession: Discrimination Against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights. Describing the half century following the Civil War, Daniel writes that “in rural areas, blacks and whites necessarily worked side by side, and despite white supremacy, friendly relationships developed across the color line. Industrious African American farmers deferred when necessary and earned the respect of their white neighbors” (emphasis mine). Berry elaborates, “By ‘deferred’ Prof. Daniel pretty clearly means that the black people, in dealing with their white neighbors, observed the etiquette of conventional prejudice. The deference indicates at least that the convention was mutually understood, dealt with, and surpassed. This suggests that, under the influence of these ‘friendly relationships,’ the need to defer might gradually have worn away if the rural communities had not been unsettled by more war, depression, and the onset of ‘social mobility.’”
“Suggests” and “gradually” are doing a lot of heavy lifting here – too much for this reader to conclude anything but that Berry is willfully opting for fantasy over reality. The past century plainly shows conventional prejudice did not gradually wear away. Again, despite acknowledging the reality of racial prejudice, Berry yanks the conversation back to neighborliness and civility. In this, he is too much like a group he has a prickly relationship with, despite the fact this group also constitutes many of his admirers: evangelical Christians. (I first discovered Berry twenty years ago through evangelical friends. And I want to stress that, as much as I disagree with this book, I can name few writers who have challenged and influenced me as much as Berry.) (Also: Berry's words here about taking Jesus's command to love your neighbor during a time of intense political polarization are more illuminating and challenging than anything I heard from a pulpit during the first Trump term.) Racism will not be eradicated if we all just act civilly toward our neighbors and lament government intervention that seeks to address the problem. Government cannot legislate away entrenched racial prejudice. But it can legislate policies and laws that ensure greater equality.
My next Berry will be poetry of some kind. I need a palate cleanser.
Because of what I’d heard about this book (from friends and reviews), I approached it with great trepidation. It sat on my shelf for over two years before I finally tackled it. It is my least favorite Berry book, both for what he says and how he says it ... not to mention the length he says it with (it clocks in at over 500 pages with the Index).
The greatest insight this book offered me is this: Because the work of enslaved people was physical labor deemed beneath their owners, slavery degraded manual labor – specifically (this being Wendell Berry) the work of farmers – and justified violent exploitation of the earth and its natural resources.
Where things go wobbly is when Berry draws a moral equivalency between racial prejudice and what I’ll call city prejudice (or possibly “land prejudice”) – the condescension Berry feels directed at him and others living in rural communities. In discussing Confederate monuments, Berry writes, “I would like to qualify myself a little by speaking of a monument that directly offends me”: a statue of James B. Duke, which Berry comes “face-to-face with” at the university that bears Duke’s name. “As the founder of the American Tobacco Company,” Berry writes, Duke represents to Berry the force that “had so gravely damaged my home country and people.” He continues, “This man embodied and enacted the ‘right’ of concentrated wealth to prey upon and destroy the people and the land community of rural America, a ‘right’ that members of my family have done all in their power to oppose for the last hundred years.” After standing before “my enemy in his imperturbable bronze,” Berry feels “troubled” but “also clarified,” a stew of emotions that culminates with the statement, “I do not have the least wish for that statue to be removed or for Duke University to change its name.”
You can see where this is going: If Berry can feel “clarified” by confronting a statue of his enemy, others might have the same experience by considering Confederate monuments. This false equivalency becomes a template Berry uses throughout; prejudice against those who work the land, he would have you believe, is -- if not the exact same, then nearly as significant as -- prejudice against people based on their skin color. Except it's not. One is a way of life. The other is inherent to one’s identity.
Though Berry goes on to note that some people at Duke have qualms about its name because James’s father Washington owned slaves, Berry performs an evasive two-step: “The exploiters of black people have almost predictably exploited white people also. When both races are exploited, black people are likely to suffer disproportionately because of their color, but of course both races suffer.”
Kirkus Review labeled this exactly what it is: “This digressive, at times exhausting book is at best a well-meaning, eloquent utopian plea to abandon urbanity; at worst, it lapses into all-lives-matter rhetoric insisting that slavery and the Confederacy, while wrongheaded, were misunderstood.”
Berry acknowledges early in the book he is “not a historian” and that “what I say about history in these chapters is not the product of systematic research. I am an amateur.” This disclosure does not excuse specious reasoning like Berry’s flippant dismissal of the inconvenient fact that these monuments “were erected in the early twentieth century, decades after Appomattox, their opponents suggesting that they were erected only in support of Jim Crow, to intimidate black people at that particular time.” This “suggestion” is, to me, an unassailable fact. But Berry equivocates. “I would not rule out the involvement of such a motive on the part of some people at any time. It is true that the motives of human beings are often bad and often mixed. It is also true that sometimes their motives are more good than bad, and sometimes they are good. … Fair-mindedness and good sense ought to advise us that the worst thing we can find out or conjecture is not necessarily the truest, also that all particulars are not necessarily explainable by generalizations.” That passage highlights two problem with the book: its logical inconsistency, and its baggy prose. The two in fact go hand-in-hand as Berry tries to carve out nuance that obfuscates, rather than clarifies, the subject at hand.
His greatest historical misstep is in fashioning a mythical Robert E. Lee out of the actual man. (This is the part Wickenden said made Berry’s family and friends especially uneasy; Berry himself acknowledges, “In conversations with friends peripheral to the making of this book over several years, I have received a number of warnings ... [that] above all, I could not speak of Robert E. Lee with any interest in understanding him or with any sympathy.”)
There are many problematic parts of Berry’s treatment of Lee, so it’s hard to pick the most emblematic one. I’ll offer this: “[Lee’s] significance for my purpose in this book is that he embodied and suffered, as did no other prominent person of his time, the division between nation and country, nationalism and patriotism, that some of us in rural America are feeling at present.” Berry admires Lee as “he was above all a Virginian" -- understandable because Berry is above all a Kentuckian. Berry believes Lee had no choice but to fight for the South since “the need to go with your people is a part of history because it is a part of human nature, and that, with care, it can be imagined and understood,” adding “I see Robert E. Lee’s choice of his native place and his people as commendable and in the long run indispensable.” Thus “the Civil War itself belongs to the larger tragedy of our abuse of our country.”
Berry cites Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s Reading the Man in his refashioning of the historical Lee. That’s the same book Adam Serwer quotes in his blistering essay “The Myth of the Kindly General Lee”, which makes me wonder how two men could read the same book and arrive at such divergent conclusions. “White supremacy was one of Lee’s most fundamental convictions,” Serwer writes. “Lee counseled others to hire white labor instead of the freedmen, observing ‘that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and whenever you find a white man, you see everything around him improving.” Berry says Lee “suffered” the division between nation and country, painting him as a passive figure. Serwer asserts, “To describe this man as an American hero requires ignoring the immense suffering for which he was personally responsible, both on and off the battlefield.”
I do not believe Berry is a white supremacist, which Serwer labels anyone who defends Lee. The Need to Be Whole acknowledges throughout the past and present reality of race prejudice and structural racism. But I hope the section above shows how Berry muddies the issue rather than clarifies it by conflating personal grievances with those others have suffered because of their race.
Late in the book Berry quotes from Pete Daniel's Dispossession: Discrimination Against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights. Describing the half century following the Civil War, Daniel writes that “in rural areas, blacks and whites necessarily worked side by side, and despite white supremacy, friendly relationships developed across the color line. Industrious African American farmers deferred when necessary and earned the respect of their white neighbors” (emphasis mine). Berry elaborates, “By ‘deferred’ Prof. Daniel pretty clearly means that the black people, in dealing with their white neighbors, observed the etiquette of conventional prejudice. The deference indicates at least that the convention was mutually understood, dealt with, and surpassed. This suggests that, under the influence of these ‘friendly relationships,’ the need to defer might gradually have worn away if the rural communities had not been unsettled by more war, depression, and the onset of ‘social mobility.’”
“Suggests” and “gradually” are doing a lot of heavy lifting here – too much for this reader to conclude anything but that Berry is willfully opting for fantasy over reality. The past century plainly shows conventional prejudice did not gradually wear away. Again, despite acknowledging the reality of racial prejudice, Berry yanks the conversation back to neighborliness and civility. In this, he is too much like a group he has a prickly relationship with, despite the fact this group also constitutes many of his admirers: evangelical Christians. (I first discovered Berry twenty years ago through evangelical friends. And I want to stress that, as much as I disagree with this book, I can name few writers who have challenged and influenced me as much as Berry.) (Also: Berry's words here about taking Jesus's command to love your neighbor during a time of intense political polarization are more illuminating and challenging than anything I heard from a pulpit during the first Trump term.) Racism will not be eradicated if we all just act civilly toward our neighbors and lament government intervention that seeks to address the problem. Government cannot legislate away entrenched racial prejudice. But it can legislate policies and laws that ensure greater equality.
My next Berry will be poetry of some kind. I need a palate cleanser.
December 9, 2022
Honest and sweeping a wide range of topics. Would read again. Feels like a summary of his other writing. Again, the connection to land and our country takes on a new dimension. Would recommend, but not as an introduction to his work. Would read The Hidden Wound and this back to back.
April 13, 2025
The Need To Be Whole is about as timely and needed as a book can get. Common sense is the term that comes to mind. How to we practice neighborly love and a responsibility to the places we inhabit? How do we live in an era of social fragmentation and economic exploitation and greed. I think Berry attends to these questions with a willingness to upset just about any political affiliation while offering something for the common life that we all share. The audiobook is fittingly read by Nick Offerman. The abundance of history lessons and education in paced, clear minded reasoning round out this essay collection’s useful argumentation. Five stars isn’t enough.
May 18, 2023
I think my first Non Fiction Berry to finish.
So many thoughts. I love how open ended much of this book was. Neighborly. In love. From racial reconciliation to reconciliation with living in a way where everything and everyone can thrive and walk in love. Took time ponder, digest. I read it digitally, probably highlighted 10%. need a copy for the shelf.
So many thoughts. I love how open ended much of this book was. Neighborly. In love. From racial reconciliation to reconciliation with living in a way where everything and everyone can thrive and walk in love. Took time ponder, digest. I read it digitally, probably highlighted 10%. need a copy for the shelf.
May 27, 2023
4.5 “Unlike the history of great events, the history of families and small places forces us to recognize the past as a shadow from which shadowy figures now and then emerge into the light, take on briefly the substance of a story, a part of a story, a few imaginable details, and merge again into the shadow.”
April 29, 2024
Immediate reactions upon finishing:
I'm not sure this is Mr Berry's most coherent work. He's always a tad disjointed, following discursive paths, untying and tying knots. But I can't say I blame him: I think he successfully proves that race and the 'race problem' cannot be disconnected from the broader issues of work (specifically, what kind of work is good), technology, and land use.
I'll have to think more about the the points he wants to make about Confederates. And I think that's all I'm willing to say. I respect Mr Berry a great deal, but I hesitate to say I follow him here.
I think there is a great brilliance in his point. Wholeness and health will not be achieved by merely elevating disenfranchised minorities to positions of leadership in an extractive and destructive economy. Rather, the best path forward is an economy based on common geography we all inhabit and life upon and off of with care and dignity and love. This is the central thesis. And I think it is one worth reflecting on.
I don't love how Mr Berry reads portions of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, when it doesn't suit him. He can be quite frustrating and misleading. I'm not sure he does justice to the text and history of Israel. His pacifism is less tenable that Ellul's, in my estimation.
While I concur that urbanites view rural people with disdain and snobbery, there are times where I think Mr Berry gets carried away in anger and frustration. I do too. But I think his points about prejudice can be turned around upon him. Of course, his broader points about rural people doing the work that urbanites look down upon which make their lives possible still stand.
I'm not sure this is Mr Berry's most coherent work. He's always a tad disjointed, following discursive paths, untying and tying knots. But I can't say I blame him: I think he successfully proves that race and the 'race problem' cannot be disconnected from the broader issues of work (specifically, what kind of work is good), technology, and land use.
I'll have to think more about the the points he wants to make about Confederates. And I think that's all I'm willing to say. I respect Mr Berry a great deal, but I hesitate to say I follow him here.
I think there is a great brilliance in his point. Wholeness and health will not be achieved by merely elevating disenfranchised minorities to positions of leadership in an extractive and destructive economy. Rather, the best path forward is an economy based on common geography we all inhabit and life upon and off of with care and dignity and love. This is the central thesis. And I think it is one worth reflecting on.
I don't love how Mr Berry reads portions of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, when it doesn't suit him. He can be quite frustrating and misleading. I'm not sure he does justice to the text and history of Israel. His pacifism is less tenable that Ellul's, in my estimation.
While I concur that urbanites view rural people with disdain and snobbery, there are times where I think Mr Berry gets carried away in anger and frustration. I do too. But I think his points about prejudice can be turned around upon him. Of course, his broader points about rural people doing the work that urbanites look down upon which make their lives possible still stand.
February 29, 2024
This is a fascinating, frustrating book, one that has a powerful argument that it sustains and builds throughout its length; to put it extremely reductively, it is that American racism is an outgrowth of an American ethos which prefers exploitation to patient and grounded and relational work (particularly, but not necessarily exclusively agrarian), and that such racism, despite many efforts to defeat it through methods both legal and military (all of which have mostly tended to just create different, sometimes equally harmful ethics), could only be repaired by enabling Americans to return to communities of grounded relationships and work, something that the "American way of life" has rejected from the start. Along the way, the book has dozens of side arguments and ancillary preoccupations which sprout off from the main branch: about Robert E. Lee and the Civil War, about Mark Twain, about John C. Calhoun, about the meaning of sin and forgiveness in a world sped-up publicity, and much more. Some of these side arguments are, I think, simply wrong, revealing that Berry, for all his brilliance, is no polymath; there are many issues that he is simply not informed about. And yet, none of those side arguments, no matter how wrong-headed, ever undermine his main point, which is one he has thought through and through, and has written about here very carefully and at great length. In fact, in light of his main point, even the most perplexing of his digressions become, if not buttresses to his overall argument, then at least important intellectual debris, evidence of a brilliant, wise mind trying his damnedest, nine decades into his life on this earth, to make sense of his fellow human beings. This book is masterful; it will stay with me, and challenge me, for a very long time.
October 7, 2023
Berry's comments about #metoo as being about cancel culture are wrongheaded and harmful to survivors of abuse. Any good or healing he aimed to do with this work was overcast by the hostility of his arguments and lack of understanding of trauma and harm. This book is so long and so preachy and also so lacking in the love he claims drove him to write it. I came to the work based on bell hooks' appreciation of his earlier works and left it confused and disappointed.
Reducing the testimony of Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford to political distraction or cancel culture, as Berry does, is harmful. Rather than look at the systemic and structural underpinnings of misogyny, racism, and other forms of oppression as the root of why cases of sexual harassment, assault, and abuse are handled poorly in our courts and communities, Berry reduces these issues to being unknowable "he said/she said" debates that are loved by the media. Not only is that analysis lazy and wrong, it's soaked in victim-blaming and lack of understanding in how trauma impacts survivors of abuse. Berry views rape as a modern issue caused by poor upbringing and lack of morals, and that belief causes a continuation of harmful myths in his work.
Reducing the testimony of Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford to political distraction or cancel culture, as Berry does, is harmful. Rather than look at the systemic and structural underpinnings of misogyny, racism, and other forms of oppression as the root of why cases of sexual harassment, assault, and abuse are handled poorly in our courts and communities, Berry reduces these issues to being unknowable "he said/she said" debates that are loved by the media. Not only is that analysis lazy and wrong, it's soaked in victim-blaming and lack of understanding in how trauma impacts survivors of abuse. Berry views rape as a modern issue caused by poor upbringing and lack of morals, and that belief causes a continuation of harmful myths in his work.
December 12, 2022
An incredible collection of Berry’s thoughts on a variety of topics which, at times, rambled. And at times the contemporary mind would double back to reconcile Berry’s perspective with its modern perception (criticisms which Berry preemptively acknowledged and recognized).
The book is worth reading for the arc is true and his wisdom is present throughout. To react quickly to Berry’s words is to miss the point entirely; rather they are something to stew on. The sometimes rambling nature kept me putting the book down and picking back up — not a quick read and not intended to be. Why would Berry (being Berry) want you to quickly soak in his thoughts to regurgitate. The thoughts must simmer and the nuance meld in your own mind and experience.
The book is worth reading for the arc is true and his wisdom is present throughout. To react quickly to Berry’s words is to miss the point entirely; rather they are something to stew on. The sometimes rambling nature kept me putting the book down and picking back up — not a quick read and not intended to be. Why would Berry (being Berry) want you to quickly soak in his thoughts to regurgitate. The thoughts must simmer and the nuance meld in your own mind and experience.
March 7, 2023
Wendell Berry is now in his 80s. For decades he’s been one of America’s finest thinkers and writers, focusing on the rural life, ecology, community, our individual and collective relationship to the land and the natural world, the connections we have with each other, especially on a local level, and the purpose of our daily lives and existence.
In his latest tome, “The Need to be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice,” he explores the role of race and racism in America, and attempts to unwind how we as a country are still mired in divisiveness among various sorts of definitions, labels, categories and assumptions about our fellow countrymen. Berry, in fact, tries to move away from just categories of race; while acknowledging and paying respects to the extra pain and suffering of people of color in this country, both today and throughout history, he tries to expand his definition of prejudice in America–and to show how this prejudice impacts us all.
There are sections of this book that approach the unpolitically incorrect, pages that can cause a liberal or progressive like me to, if not cringe, at least shift in my chair. Berry defends Civil War monuments, and pokes at the movement to remove them. He explains that they are part of our history, and he goes on at length exploring the character–and thinking–of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It’s true that, like all of us, Lee was a complicated person. Perhaps it’s wrong to view him only as the leader of an army that foisted succession upon the United States and defended slavery. Part of Berry’s mission in this book is reflected in the title. He wants us to be whole, as individuals, and as communities, and as a country, and a big part of that is understanding the composite parts of our stories and needs and wants and beliefs so that we can rise above our differences and see what unites us–and motivates our actions and thoughts.
I also found Berry’s descriptions or assumptions of progressives and liberals to be trite and stereotypical. The kinds of freedom that liberals (such as myself) desire for the citizens of this country extend well beyond liberties of sexual expression (never mind that our political opponents want to take away that liberty, of course).
And while it’s tough to disagree with his contention that liberal positions do not go for enough to restore justice to underserved communities and to our environment, I think the critic’s arrow would be far better aimed at those on the right side of the political aisle. It is difficult, I suppose, if not impossible, to compose a treatise on American history and America today and completely ignore our political divides. But Berry’s mischaracterizations of progressivism–and the lack of credit given to what liberals and progressive have been able to win and secure for American citizens–detract from the main purpose of his book, which is to ultimately say we’re all in this together, all meaning all living things, including our natural environment, and that the way we as a country operate in terms of our economy and means of sustaining ourselves is twisted and sets on a path towards eventual self-ruin.
That said, Berry does quite a job here walking us through his version of American history, especially focusing on the Civil War. His analysis of that time period–and especially the years and decades after the war during Reconstruction–is insightful. He explains and shows how war rarely leaves warring sides in a better place, even if, in historical moments, war seems, and is, the only option. No presidential decree could on its own end slavery, and the South’s willingness to secede from the Union would not have been ameliorated at a negotiating table.
But the question of what makes us whole is important, and often overlooked, and is critical–and elemental–to Berry’s thinking and writing. It’s what makes him so special and important. His philosophy about ways of being strike at the core of where we as individuals, and as a society, have gone off the rails, both in terms of the way we’ve constructed society and also structure our daily lives. He is not wrong when he argues there is a prejudice against farmers and manual laborers in this country; he even explicates the history of this country’s overall disdain of manual labor itself. He is right to ask of urbanites how we can so easily ignore where our food comes from. He wonders how we have so easily handed over the machinations of what we need to survive (food and shelter and transportation and medicine and so much else) over to industry and corporations.
And when he asks how many of us could truly support ourselves, feed ourselves, manage to live off the land, he makes his point of how divorced we are from what makes us living creatures on this planet. We’ve come to expect by now, after decades of writing, for Berry to illuminate what we’ve lost from being so far detached from land, from communities and a sense of place. He covers this ground again here and he is as moving and powerful as ever. He is unafraid, still and refreshing so, in arguing that the changes we need to make to improve our lives do not live around the edges, but are wholesale. He pulls up short on specifics for what individuals can do; it is, after all, not as simple as leaving the city and returning to the land. As Berry explains at length, even those already there are struggling to do that. His history of our country’s mistreatment of farmers–and the land–is one of the strongest parts of this book. That he is able to wind that history to the beginnings and aftermath of the Civil War is an impressive and enlightening feat.
We should all be grateful and appreciative of Berry’s lifetime of work, what he’s given us through his writing. His voice is a treasure, a valuable, learned spring of wisdom. And it’s not a coincidence, I don’t think, as he nears the end of his writing career, that he dedicates much of the latter section of this book to the idea of work. His critique of the modern economy, the way it limits us, and yes, the way it can enslave us and deprive us of so much, hits home in so many ways, ways that frankly it’s easier to ignore and not think about it because they are so painful, and accurate. His deep, deep understanding of what ties us together as people, and what makes us whole as individuals, is one of his greatest gifts.
Berry’s writing, in this book and others, can often be a spiritual experience, in that it taps that part of ourselves that is at the core of our purpose. He deals a bit with religious thought in this book, but I found his most moving passages in his critiques of our economy, our work, our treatment of others and how in all of that we’ve bankrupted, dare I say it, our souls. There is a phrase in a Jewish prayer book I recall quite a bit: “We have not come into being to hate or to destroy; we have come into being to praise, to labor and to love.” Berry in unafraid to talk about the importance and centrality of love in our lives, as a cure and a driving force. Love is what us whole, and that is the crux of this philosopher’s message.
In his latest tome, “The Need to be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice,” he explores the role of race and racism in America, and attempts to unwind how we as a country are still mired in divisiveness among various sorts of definitions, labels, categories and assumptions about our fellow countrymen. Berry, in fact, tries to move away from just categories of race; while acknowledging and paying respects to the extra pain and suffering of people of color in this country, both today and throughout history, he tries to expand his definition of prejudice in America–and to show how this prejudice impacts us all.
There are sections of this book that approach the unpolitically incorrect, pages that can cause a liberal or progressive like me to, if not cringe, at least shift in my chair. Berry defends Civil War monuments, and pokes at the movement to remove them. He explains that they are part of our history, and he goes on at length exploring the character–and thinking–of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It’s true that, like all of us, Lee was a complicated person. Perhaps it’s wrong to view him only as the leader of an army that foisted succession upon the United States and defended slavery. Part of Berry’s mission in this book is reflected in the title. He wants us to be whole, as individuals, and as communities, and as a country, and a big part of that is understanding the composite parts of our stories and needs and wants and beliefs so that we can rise above our differences and see what unites us–and motivates our actions and thoughts.
I also found Berry’s descriptions or assumptions of progressives and liberals to be trite and stereotypical. The kinds of freedom that liberals (such as myself) desire for the citizens of this country extend well beyond liberties of sexual expression (never mind that our political opponents want to take away that liberty, of course).
And while it’s tough to disagree with his contention that liberal positions do not go for enough to restore justice to underserved communities and to our environment, I think the critic’s arrow would be far better aimed at those on the right side of the political aisle. It is difficult, I suppose, if not impossible, to compose a treatise on American history and America today and completely ignore our political divides. But Berry’s mischaracterizations of progressivism–and the lack of credit given to what liberals and progressive have been able to win and secure for American citizens–detract from the main purpose of his book, which is to ultimately say we’re all in this together, all meaning all living things, including our natural environment, and that the way we as a country operate in terms of our economy and means of sustaining ourselves is twisted and sets on a path towards eventual self-ruin.
That said, Berry does quite a job here walking us through his version of American history, especially focusing on the Civil War. His analysis of that time period–and especially the years and decades after the war during Reconstruction–is insightful. He explains and shows how war rarely leaves warring sides in a better place, even if, in historical moments, war seems, and is, the only option. No presidential decree could on its own end slavery, and the South’s willingness to secede from the Union would not have been ameliorated at a negotiating table.
But the question of what makes us whole is important, and often overlooked, and is critical–and elemental–to Berry’s thinking and writing. It’s what makes him so special and important. His philosophy about ways of being strike at the core of where we as individuals, and as a society, have gone off the rails, both in terms of the way we’ve constructed society and also structure our daily lives. He is not wrong when he argues there is a prejudice against farmers and manual laborers in this country; he even explicates the history of this country’s overall disdain of manual labor itself. He is right to ask of urbanites how we can so easily ignore where our food comes from. He wonders how we have so easily handed over the machinations of what we need to survive (food and shelter and transportation and medicine and so much else) over to industry and corporations.
And when he asks how many of us could truly support ourselves, feed ourselves, manage to live off the land, he makes his point of how divorced we are from what makes us living creatures on this planet. We’ve come to expect by now, after decades of writing, for Berry to illuminate what we’ve lost from being so far detached from land, from communities and a sense of place. He covers this ground again here and he is as moving and powerful as ever. He is unafraid, still and refreshing so, in arguing that the changes we need to make to improve our lives do not live around the edges, but are wholesale. He pulls up short on specifics for what individuals can do; it is, after all, not as simple as leaving the city and returning to the land. As Berry explains at length, even those already there are struggling to do that. His history of our country’s mistreatment of farmers–and the land–is one of the strongest parts of this book. That he is able to wind that history to the beginnings and aftermath of the Civil War is an impressive and enlightening feat.
We should all be grateful and appreciative of Berry’s lifetime of work, what he’s given us through his writing. His voice is a treasure, a valuable, learned spring of wisdom. And it’s not a coincidence, I don’t think, as he nears the end of his writing career, that he dedicates much of the latter section of this book to the idea of work. His critique of the modern economy, the way it limits us, and yes, the way it can enslave us and deprive us of so much, hits home in so many ways, ways that frankly it’s easier to ignore and not think about it because they are so painful, and accurate. His deep, deep understanding of what ties us together as people, and what makes us whole as individuals, is one of his greatest gifts.
Berry’s writing, in this book and others, can often be a spiritual experience, in that it taps that part of ourselves that is at the core of our purpose. He deals a bit with religious thought in this book, but I found his most moving passages in his critiques of our economy, our work, our treatment of others and how in all of that we’ve bankrupted, dare I say it, our souls. There is a phrase in a Jewish prayer book I recall quite a bit: “We have not come into being to hate or to destroy; we have come into being to praise, to labor and to love.” Berry in unafraid to talk about the importance and centrality of love in our lives, as a cure and a driving force. Love is what us whole, and that is the crux of this philosopher’s message.
November 2, 2022
I mean what to say...it's Wendell Berry. This was a truly epic work for him tying so many things together. There was just so many different avenues he went down, that I wondered at times if it should be one book.
You can always "see" he is speaking his truth from his heart and he should be applauded for that. I am a total conservative, but not some Trump enthusiast and I found his "Trump" bashing completely unnecessary and annoying. The amount of times he said his name was kind of pathetic. He could have articulated his points without going down that totally annoying hyperfocused theme of our times. He did attempt to balance quite a few of his conservative criticisms with liberal criticism as well and I always felt like he was trying to give a balanced approach other than using that annoying name way too much. He should have stuck with just political parties or conservative/liberal contrasting.
I appreciated the focus he placed on the Civil War in an attempt to clarify and focus us on to ideas we should be knowledgeable about. He made me want to read a biography on Robert E. Lee. I enjoyed the lense he helped me see through in this area.
Ultimately, he presented so many points and they were all fairly strong and never offensive in my eyes. But I felt like it was a stream of consciousness at times and often was looking for more definitive closure on each point. He kind of meandered here and there.
On a side note, I appreciated how much respect he has for Ernest Gaines. I will definitely be adding more of his works to my reading list as well as Crystal Wilkinson's book he quoted.
You can always "see" he is speaking his truth from his heart and he should be applauded for that. I am a total conservative, but not some Trump enthusiast and I found his "Trump" bashing completely unnecessary and annoying. The amount of times he said his name was kind of pathetic. He could have articulated his points without going down that totally annoying hyperfocused theme of our times. He did attempt to balance quite a few of his conservative criticisms with liberal criticism as well and I always felt like he was trying to give a balanced approach other than using that annoying name way too much. He should have stuck with just political parties or conservative/liberal contrasting.
I appreciated the focus he placed on the Civil War in an attempt to clarify and focus us on to ideas we should be knowledgeable about. He made me want to read a biography on Robert E. Lee. I enjoyed the lense he helped me see through in this area.
Ultimately, he presented so many points and they were all fairly strong and never offensive in my eyes. But I felt like it was a stream of consciousness at times and often was looking for more definitive closure on each point. He kind of meandered here and there.
On a side note, I appreciated how much respect he has for Ernest Gaines. I will definitely be adding more of his works to my reading list as well as Crystal Wilkinson's book he quoted.
February 3, 2023
I don't really know how to review this. I can't work out whether it's hopelessly nostalgic or genuinely prophetic, and it's a million miles from the way I have or will live my life. It's certainly a bit long, and it's better on problems than on answers. And perhaps unsurprisingly eschatology doesn't really come into the question: a lot of creation order, no gospel (and no heavenly inheritance). But it's one of the more interesting things I've read in a while, his pushback on a simplistic abuse of history is welcome, and I'm glad to have invested the time. And I'm looking forward to putting Wendell's agrarianism into practice in the new earth.
April 29, 2023
This was my introduction to Mr. Berry. I wish it wasn’t. His view is interesting but there are large holes and inconsistencies in the thinking. There are also too many romanticisms of farming, of slavery, of hand work. He is brilliant though, even if I don’t agree with him. I will have to go back to his other work. I listened to Nick Offermann read it for Audible. It was slow. I listened at speed.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 149 reviews