The first volume of the Library of America's definitive two-volume selection of the nonfiction writings of our greatest living advocate for sustainable culture.
Writing with elegance and clarity, Wendell Berry is a compassionate and compelling voice for our time of political and cultural distrust and division, whether expounding the joys and wisdom of nonindustrial agriculture, relishing the pleasure of eating food produced locally by people you know, or giving voice to a righteous contempt for hollow innovation. He is our most important writer on the cultural crisis posed by industrialization and mass consumerism, and the vital role of rural, sustainable farming in preserving the planet as well as our national character. Now, in celebration of Berry's extraordinary six-decade-long career, Library of America presents a two-volume selection of his nonfiction writings prepared in close consultation with the author.
This first volume collects thirty-three essays from nine different books, including his first, The Long-Legged House (1969), What are People For? (1990), with its still provocative essay "Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer," and the complete text of his now classic The Unsettling of America (1975), whose argument about the enormous ecological, economic, and human costs of industrial agriculture has, as the author notes, "not had the happy fate of being proved wrong."
Berry's essays remain timely, even urgent today, and will resonate with anyone interested in our relationship to the natural world and especially with a younger, politically engaged generation invested in the future welfare of the planet.
INCLUDES:
The Unsettling of America
AND SELECTIONS FROM
The Long-Legged House
The Hidden Wound
A Continuous Harmony
Recollected Essays
The Gift of Good Land
Standing by Words
Home Economics
What Are People For?
Volume II : The indispensable writings of our foremost voice on the current ecological and cultural crisis, more relevant now than ever, in a special two-volume edition prepared in consultation with the author.
Writing with elegance and clarity, Wendell Berry is a compassionate and compelling voice for our time of political and cultural distrust and division, whether expounding the joys and wisdom of nonindustrial agriculture, relishing the pleasure of eating food produced locally by people you know, or giving voice to a righteous contempt for hollow technological innovation. He is our most important writer on the cultural crisis posed by industrialization and mass consumerism, and the vital role of rural, sustainable farming in preserving the planet as well as our national character. Now, in celebration of Berry's extraordinary six-decade-long career, Library of America presents a two-volume boxed set edition of his nonfiction writings prepared in close consultation with the author.
Here in full are such landmark books as The Unsettling of America and Life Is a Miracle, along with generous selections from more than a dozen other volumes, revealing as never before the evolution of Berry's thoughts and concerns as a farmer, neighbor, citizen, teacher, activist, and ecological philosopher. Throughout he demonstrates that our existence is always connected to the land, and that even in a modern global economy local farming is essential to the flourishing of our culture, to healthy living and stable communities, and indeed to the continuing survival of the human species. Berry's essays remain timely, even urgent today, and will resonate with anyone interested in our relationship to the natural world and especially with a younger, politically engaged generation invested in the future welfare of the planet.