Authors: Wendell Berry
ISBN-13: 9780871568779, ISBN-10: 0871568772
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Sierra Club Books
Date Published: November 2004
Edition: REVISED
Wendell Berry - writer, poet, teacher, naturalist, and farmer - is the author of many notable works, including The Gift of Good Land; Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community; and Fidelity. He and his family live - and farm - in Port Royal, Kentucky.
Since its publication by Sierra Club Books 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. Today’s agribusiness, however, takes farming out of its cultural context and away from families. As a result, we as a nation are more estranged from the landfrom the intimate knowledge, love, and care of it.
Sadly, as Berry notes in his Afterword to this third edition, his arguments and observations are more relevant than ever. We continue to suffer loss of community, the devaluation of human work, and the destruction of nature under an economic system 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.
Ch. 1 | The Unsettling of America | 3 |
Ch. 2 | The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Character | 17 |
Ch. 3 | The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Agriculture | 27 |
Ch. 4 | The Agricultural Crisis as a Crisis of Culture | 39 |
Ch. 5 | Living in the Future: The "Modern" Agricultural Ideal | 51 |
Ch. 6 | The Use of Energy | 81 |
Ch. 7 | The Body and the Earth | 97 |
Ch. 8 | Jefferson, Morrill, and the Upper Crust | 143 |
Ch. 9 | Margins | 171 |
Notes | 225 | |
Afterword to the Third Edition | 229 |