Library of America #317

"Including Life is a Miracle and selections from Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, Another Turn of the Crank, Citizenship Papers, The Way of Ignorance, What Matters?, Imagination in Place, It All Turns on Affection, Our Only World, The Art of Loading Brush"

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. In this second volume, forty-four essays from ten works turn to issues of political and social debate--big government, science and religion, and the meaning of citizenship following the tragedy of 9/11. Also included is his Jefferson Lecture to the National Endowment for the Humanities, "It All Turns on Affection" (2012). 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 Sex, economy, freedom, & community (1993). Conservation and local economy ; Conservation is good work ; Christianity and the survival of creation ; Sex, economy, freedom, and community -- From Another turn of the crank (1995). Farming and the global economy ; Conserving forest communities ; Health is membership -- Life is a miracle: an essay against modern superstition (2000). Ignorance ; Propriety ; On Edward O. Wilson's Consilience ; Reduction and religion ; Reduction and art ; A conversation out of school ; Toward a change of standards ; Some notes in conclusion -- From Citizenship papers (2003). A citizen's response ; Thoughts in the presence of fear ; The failure of war ; In distrust of movements ; The total economy ; Two minds ; The whole horse ; The agrarian standard ; Conservationist and agrarian -- From The way of ignorance (2005). Secrecy vs. rights ; Contempt for small places ; Compromise, hell! ; Charlie Fisher ; The way of ignorance ; Quantity vs. form ; Renewing husbandry ; The burden of the Gospels -- From What matters? (2010). Money versus goods ; Faustian economics -- From Imagination in place (2010). Imagination in place ; American imagination and the Civil War ; Sweetness preserved ; The uses of adversity ; God, science, and imagination -- From It all turns on affection (2012). It all turns on affection ; About civil disobedience -- From Our only world (2015). Paragraphs from a notebook ; The commerce of violence ; A forest conversation ; Local economies to save the land and the people ; Caught in the middle ; Our deserted country ; On being asked for "A narrative for the future" -- From The art of loading brush (2017). The thought of limits in a prodigal age ; The presence of nature in the natural world: a long conversation