The Art of the Commonplace

The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry

By Berry, Wendell & Wirzba, Introduced by Norman & Wirzba, Norman

Publishers Summary:
Collected here for the first time, the essential essays from Wendell Berry's writings on agrarianism, agriculture, and community. Together these twenty-one essays offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture. Grouped around five themes--geobiography, an agrarian critique of culture, agrarian fundamentals, agrarian economics, and agrarian religion--they provide an excellent introduction to the wide range of Wendell Berry's work. They also demonstrate that Berry's writing promotes a clearly defined agrarian vision compelling to those dissatisfied with the stress, anxiety, ill health, and destructiveness of media-driven culture. Readers will find in these essays illuminating discussions on questions such as: Why is agriculture becoming culturally irrelevant, and at what cost? What are the forces of social disintegration, and how might they be reversed? How might men and women live together in ways that are to the benefit of both? And how does the corporate takeover of social institutions and economic practices contribute to the destruction of human and natural environments? Whether it be through his staunch support of local economies, his defense of farming communities, or his call for family integrity, Berry emerges as the champion of responsibilities and priorities that serve the health, vitality, and happiness of the whole community of creation.

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ISBN
978-1-58243-146-8
Publisher
Counterpoint Press


REVIEWS

Library Journal

Reviewed on May 1, 2002

Writer and farmer Berry has long been an inspiration to the contemporary agrarian movement and a guiding light to people who care deeply about the health of their land and their communities. In his numerous books of essays, he has thoughtfully and articulately shown how the current consumer-based, profit-driven industrial society not only destroys our natural world but also increasingly har...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

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