#000654
The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry's foundational indictment of industrial agriculture, and one of the great agrarian arguments of the last half-century. Berry — poet, novelist, essayist, and a farmer of the same Kentucky land for decades — contends that treating farming as mere production, rather than as culture and stewardship, degrades the soil, dissolves rural communities, and corrodes character itself, binding ecological damage to a deeper failure of care. Controversial when it appeared, it has since become a founding text of the local-food, sustainable-agriculture, and environmental movements, and its warnings read as increasingly prescient; some of its arguments about gender have drawn later criticism, but the core case endures. Read it beside Berry's essays, or Michael Pollan, who builds openly on him. A quiet, durable classic.
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The author
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and farmer who has lived and worked the same Kentucky land for decades. One of the most important agrarian voices of his time, he writes across genres in defense of place, community, husbandry, and limits.
The book
The Unsettling of America indicts the industrialization of farming, arguing that treating agriculture as mere production - rather than as culture and stewardship - degrades soil, dissolves rural communities, and corrodes character. It links ecological damage to a deeper failure of care.
How it has aged
Controversial when it appeared, it has become a founding text of the local-food, sustainable-agriculture, and environmental movements, and its warnings look increasingly prescient. Some of its arguments about gender have drawn later criticism, but its core case endures.
For more context
Read it beside Berry's essay collections and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, which openly builds on him.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Wendell Berry
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Essays
- Location
- Colorado