Library of America #316

"Including 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?"

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

From The long-legged house (1969). The rise ; The long-legged house ; A native hill -- From The hidden wound (1970). Chapters 4 through 8 -- From A continuous harmony (1972). Think little ; Discipline and hope ; In defense of literacy -- From Recollected essays (1981). The making of a marginal farm -- Unsettling of America -- From The gift of good land (1981). Horse-drawn tools and the doctrine of labor saving ; Solving for pattern ; Family work ; A few words for motherhood ; A talent for necessity ; Seven Amish farms ; The gift of good land -- From Standing by words (1983). Standing by words -- Poetry and marriage: the use of old forms -- From Home economics (1987). Getting along with nature ; Two economies ; The loss of the university ; Preserving wildness ; A good farmer of the old school -- From What are people for? (1990). Damage ; Wallace Stegner and the great community ; Writer and region ; An argument for diversity ; The pleasures of eating ; The work of local culture ; Why I am not going to buy a computer ; Feminism, the body, and the machine ; Word and flesh ; Nature as measure