Exploring the Impact of Culture and Agriculture on the Transformation of America: The Unsettling of America

Captain Beefheart: I’d gush all day about WB but this was a gift for a friend who is a newer farmer (Not a philosopher, at all).
My friend actually read the book and said it blew his mind, caused real soul searching, and declared WB as the “Dalai Lama of rural America.”
You should prob read it.

United States on Aug 24, 2023

Amazon Customer: The book demo states that "big is not always better." Farming sustainably is far more important than farming productively. It would be appealing to know where your food comes from again.

United States on May 09, 2022

Bonnita Foster: Really good information about the state of our US agriculture and diet systems, and their impact on society. However, it’s also detestable for anyone to be so arrogant as to assign motives and intent to the actions of historical, or contemporary, people based on opinion and/or hind site. And he did plenty of that.
But, if we’re unwilling to be made uncomfortable, or even offended, then we’ll never learn anything. So, I highly recommend reading this, I enjoyed it very much.

United States on Mar 13, 2022

Cheetah7: This is a must read. It should be part of the high school curriculum! Wendell Berry hits the nail on the head with this one. But then again, he always does!

Canada on Feb 20, 2021

Tunc Ali Kuetuekcueoglu: This book is unfortunately not yet translated into Turkish. It must be translated in good quality into Turkish (and into every language) and it must be studied and discussed in every school in the context of agriculture, gardening, agroecology, food/nutrition, sustainability, ecological literacy, philosophy of science and education...

I've found in "The Unsettling of America" one of the best critics about modern industrial science and education, which is overly fragmented (i.e. specialized with rigid disciplinary boundaries) at the cost of losing the sight of complete picture (incl. meaning and purpose), mechanistic & reductionist and market/money and corporate-oriented, that is, serving to the narrow interests of greedy corporations and their investors; not to humanity as a whole, including future generations.

Germany on Aug 17, 2020

Mom: As a society, as a world, so much of our mindset is formed by our history, without our even realizing it. This book does an exceptional job of showing that history and how it affects our everyday lives and thinking about so many more things than just agriculture. It's not a dusty, boring history book though; it's so much more, and so skillfully written, weaving present and past in an informative and interesting dialogue.
I was blown away by how much we think alike about our current state of agriculture and our disposable society! The seeds of this current unsustainable life style really go deep and wide, far deeper and wider than I had realized, and I've been seeing most of these problems and working to change them in my own life for over 50 years.
On the other hand, gratefully, this book also showed me a few areas where I need to make some improvements in my level of sustainability - and I had thought I was doing very well all of the way around on my little homestead.

United States on Mar 17, 2020

Wayne F Reed: Much of Wendell’s thinking struck a deep, long term cord with me. But I will state up front that , while I think he is absolutely right in so many fundamental ways, he is quixotic beyond any reality, and so represents a ‘lost, noble cause’.
His basic premise is to decry modern technology’s inexorable lurch towards ‘efficiency’, what Spike South and I used to speak of as ‘the spirit of the hound’, the tendency of the technocracy to go after the jugular of an issue with fangs bared and no holds barred; no complex human dimensions need be considered. The growing efficiency is manifested in the legions of ‘experts and specialists’. Berry points out the modern person has become merely a ‘consumer’, who lives in a house built by a specialist, drives a car built by another specialist, eats food grown and processed by other specialists, and, after a day of work at his own specialty, comes home to be entertained by entertainment specialists on television. The consumer may live an entire life without eating any food he has produced or using a single item he has crafted.
Berry focuses on the effects of specialization on U.S. agriculture, how its growth into...

United States on Jun 07, 2018

Andi Solowka: Everyone should read this book. Great writing and amazing arguments.

Canada on Aug 02, 2017