The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The mid-20th-century environmental crisis that led to important protective legislation in the 1970s, is, to poet/farmer Wendell Berry's mind, also a crisis of character, agriculture, and culture. Because Americans are divorced from the land, they mistreat it; because they are divorced from each other, they mistreat those around them. Berry, writing in a prophetic mode, argues that if Americans are to heal the environmental wounds their land has suffered, they will also need to create more meaningful work, sustain happier and healthier lives, and return to what conservatives call "family values." The Unsettling of America is a quarter century old now, but most of its arguments remain current.
Book Description
Since its original publication in 1977, The Unsettling of America has been recognized as a classic of American letters. In it, Wendell Berry argues that good farming is a cultural development and spiritual discipline. But today's agribusiness takes farming out of its cultural context and away from families, and as a nation we are thus more estranged from the land - from the intimate knowledge, love, and care of it.
Sadly, as Berry notes in this edition, his arguments and observations are even more relevant than ever. We continue to suffer loss of community, the devaluation of human work, and the destruction of nature under an economics dedicated to the mechanistic pursuit of products and profits. Although "this book has not had the happy fate of being proved wrong," Berry writes, there are good people working "to make something comely and enduring of our life on this earth." Wendell Berry is one of those people, writing and working, as ever, with passion, eloquence, and conviction.
The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture
The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture,Wendell Berry,Sierra Club Books,0871568772,Agricultural Economics,Agricultural History,Agriculture,Agriculture - General,Economic aspects,Essays,Literature - Classics / Criticism,Social aspects,Sociology,Sociology - General,Technology,United States,Agriculture & related industries,Cultural studies,Literary Criticism & Collections / General,USA
English Books:
Recommended Books