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alreadyemily's review against another edition
3.0
I don't know how to review this book. I basically vascillated between feeling deep in my soul that I was reading Pure Truth, and being completely disengaged and skimming.
I don't think I've ever highlighted so much in s book that wasn't read for part of my schooling. And yet, the book spends so much time on picking apart specific people's positions, articles, speeches, etc. I think I should have found that dull even if I wasn't reading the book 43 years later. I would have hoped that in later editions (I read #3) or a spin-off title that greater care could have been taken to make the content more timeless because I do think there was a lot of unexpected and important ground covered in this book.
I don't think I've ever highlighted so much in s book that wasn't read for part of my schooling. And yet, the book spends so much time on picking apart specific people's positions, articles, speeches, etc. I think I should have found that dull even if I wasn't reading the book 43 years later. I would have hoped that in later editions (I read #3) or a spin-off title that greater care could have been taken to make the content more timeless because I do think there was a lot of unexpected and important ground covered in this book.
fairchildone's review
4.0
A book worth reading for every American in particular and everyone more generally. While the text is sometimes dense and while Berry sometimes stretches from his premises to his conclusions, I still found myself nodding with and feeling every conclusion. This book agitates and enriches the soul. It engenders a desire to connect more deeply with the Earth. By doing so, I think Berry would agree, we will connect more deeply with ourselves, with each other, and with Creation. I hope to return to this book at least once more.
rich71's review
5.0
The amazing part of Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America for me is that it clearly and calmly outlines the major problems facing the United States in the late 1970's and so fully explores the sources of these changes from the fragmentation of the family, the explosion of corporate greed, and the loss of purpose among the workforce and yet goes beyond a simply eulogizing to offer real and difficult solutions.
Berry's central theme for me was that hard work has been made a soiled concept (excuse the pun). He outlines numerous examples of people doing legitimate work that have found contentment and solace in a hectic and changing world. The values of family, a balance of self-interest and community sacrifice, along with other fundamental moral principles have been sacrificed at the altar of industrialization. We have been sold off to the highest bidder and are afloat in a sea of self-interest and greed that so permeates our economy and now our social lives. The prescription for these woes, in Berry's mind, comes from a balance of hard work coupled with a refusal of base-consumerism, industrialism, and petroleum-based solutions to delicate and complex problems.
I was profoundly affected by Berry's book. I would go so far as to rate it as one of the most powerful works I've read. The profusion of sticky-notes protruding from the edge of my completed copy remind me of the profound insights I enjoyed while reading this masterpiece. A few examples include:
"If there is any law that has been consistently operative in American history, it is that the members of any established people or group or community sooner or later become "redskins" -- that is, they become the designated victims of an utterly ruthless, officially sanctioned and subsidized exploitation." p. 4
"The first, and best known, hazard of the specialist system is that it produces specialists -- people who are elaborately and expensively trained TO DO ONE THING. We get into absurdity very quickly here... More common, and more damaging, are the investors, manufacturers, and salesmen of devices who have no concern for the possible effects of those devices. Specialization is thus seen to be a way of institutionalizing, justifying, and paying highly for a calamitous disintegration and scattering-out of the various functions of character: workmanship, care, conscience, responsibility." p.19
"The concentration of farmland into larger and larger holdings and fewer and fewer hands... forces a profound revolution in the farmer's mind: once his investment in land and machines is large enough, he must forsake the values of husbandry and assume those of finance and technology." p. 45
"But nowhere is the destructive influence of the modern home so great as in its remoteness from work. When people do not live where they work, they do not feel the effects of what they do... The people responsible for strip-mining, clear-cutting of forests, and other ruinations do not live where their senses will be offended or their homes or livelihoods or lives immediately threatened by the consequences." p. 52
"As machines replace skill, they disconnect themselves from life; the come between us and life. They begin to enact our ignorance of value -- of essential sources, dependencies, and relationships." and he goes on to say "When productive power--that is, speed--in machines replaces the productive skills of people, there is a consequent narrowing of attention. The machines are expensive and they run on purchased fuels; they feed upon money. The work of production is immediately profitable, whereas the work or responsibility is not. Once the machine is in the field it creates an economic pressure that enforces haste; the machine concentrate all the energy of the farm and hurries it toward the marketplace. The demands of immediate use eclipse the demands of continuity. As the skills of production decline, the skills of responsibility perish." pp 92-94
Not to be excludes, Berry takes aim at what he sees as a loss of credibility among university professors:
"The careerist professor is by definition a specialist professor. Utterly dependent upon his institution, be blunts his critical intelligence and blurs his language so as to exist "harmoniously" within it--and so serves his school with an emasculated and fragmentary intelligence, deferring "realistically" to the redundant procedures and meaningless demands of an inflated administrative bureaucracy whose educational purpose is written on its paychecks." p. 148
Berry's central theme for me was that hard work has been made a soiled concept (excuse the pun). He outlines numerous examples of people doing legitimate work that have found contentment and solace in a hectic and changing world. The values of family, a balance of self-interest and community sacrifice, along with other fundamental moral principles have been sacrificed at the altar of industrialization. We have been sold off to the highest bidder and are afloat in a sea of self-interest and greed that so permeates our economy and now our social lives. The prescription for these woes, in Berry's mind, comes from a balance of hard work coupled with a refusal of base-consumerism, industrialism, and petroleum-based solutions to delicate and complex problems.
I was profoundly affected by Berry's book. I would go so far as to rate it as one of the most powerful works I've read. The profusion of sticky-notes protruding from the edge of my completed copy remind me of the profound insights I enjoyed while reading this masterpiece. A few examples include:
"If there is any law that has been consistently operative in American history, it is that the members of any established people or group or community sooner or later become "redskins" -- that is, they become the designated victims of an utterly ruthless, officially sanctioned and subsidized exploitation." p. 4
"The first, and best known, hazard of the specialist system is that it produces specialists -- people who are elaborately and expensively trained TO DO ONE THING. We get into absurdity very quickly here... More common, and more damaging, are the investors, manufacturers, and salesmen of devices who have no concern for the possible effects of those devices. Specialization is thus seen to be a way of institutionalizing, justifying, and paying highly for a calamitous disintegration and scattering-out of the various functions of character: workmanship, care, conscience, responsibility." p.19
"The concentration of farmland into larger and larger holdings and fewer and fewer hands... forces a profound revolution in the farmer's mind: once his investment in land and machines is large enough, he must forsake the values of husbandry and assume those of finance and technology." p. 45
"But nowhere is the destructive influence of the modern home so great as in its remoteness from work. When people do not live where they work, they do not feel the effects of what they do... The people responsible for strip-mining, clear-cutting of forests, and other ruinations do not live where their senses will be offended or their homes or livelihoods or lives immediately threatened by the consequences." p. 52
"As machines replace skill, they disconnect themselves from life; the come between us and life. They begin to enact our ignorance of value -- of essential sources, dependencies, and relationships." and he goes on to say "When productive power--that is, speed--in machines replaces the productive skills of people, there is a consequent narrowing of attention. The machines are expensive and they run on purchased fuels; they feed upon money. The work of production is immediately profitable, whereas the work or responsibility is not. Once the machine is in the field it creates an economic pressure that enforces haste; the machine concentrate all the energy of the farm and hurries it toward the marketplace. The demands of immediate use eclipse the demands of continuity. As the skills of production decline, the skills of responsibility perish." pp 92-94
Not to be excludes, Berry takes aim at what he sees as a loss of credibility among university professors:
"The careerist professor is by definition a specialist professor. Utterly dependent upon his institution, be blunts his critical intelligence and blurs his language so as to exist "harmoniously" within it--and so serves his school with an emasculated and fragmentary intelligence, deferring "realistically" to the redundant procedures and meaningless demands of an inflated administrative bureaucracy whose educational purpose is written on its paychecks." p. 148
krystalkat0_0's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
slow-paced
5.0
This book is on my list of rereads every few years!
gadsdenlee's review
Pretty good content, was written in the 80s so some of the political references fall flat. Some of his fears have come to fruition. Some haven't. Just too long.
bamboobones_rory's review
4.75
amazing
old but good
really important to read if you are connected to farming or food systems in any way
old but good
really important to read if you are connected to farming or food systems in any way