Wendell Berry

"Andy Catlett tells the story of his grandfather and father's lives and how their stories, recalled by Andy to his own children and grandchildren, become "A Story Unending." Marce Catlett rises in the dark to go from his farm, by horseback and train, to Louisville for the sale of his tobacco crop at the auction house there. The price paid for each year's crop is being determined and destroyed by the power of a single buyer, James B. Duke. This year...

"The reasoned and insistent exhortations of a man with a cause who, rather than mellowing with age and wisdom, continues to grow in forcefulness and vision." —Booklist
Over the years, Wendell Berry has sought to understand and confront the financial structure of modern society and the impact of developing late capitalism on American culture. There is perhaps no more demanding or important critique available to contemporary citizens...

An impassioned, thoughtful, and fearless essay on the effects of racism on the American identity by one of our country’s most humane literary voices.
Acclaimed as “one of the most humane, honest, liberating works of our time” (The Village Voice), The Hidden Wound is a book-length essay about racism and the damage it has done to the identity of our country. Through Berry’s personal experience, he explains...

"Stern but compassionate, author Wendell Berry raises broader issues that environmentalists rarely focus on . . . In one sense Berry is the voice of a rural agrarian tradition that stretches from rural Kentucky back to the origins of human civilization. But his insights are universal because Our Only World is filled with beautiful, compassionate writing and careful, profound thinking." —Associated Press
The planet's environmental...

Wendell Berry has never been afraid to speak up for the dispossessed. The Need to Be Whole continues the work he began in The Hidden Wound (1970) and The Unsettling of America (1977), demanding a careful exploration of this hard, shared
truth: The wealth of the mighty few governing this nation has been built on the unpaid labor of others.
Without historical understanding of this practice of dispossession—the displacement of Native peoples,...

This farmer, ecologist, and writer Berry speaks of enduring values, the wholeness of life, and the interdependence of all creatures (including humans). Berry's self-discipline and ethical sense come through as he leads us from the microcosm of his Kentucky hill farm to the macrocosm of a sane and reasoned planetary vision based on personal integrity, faithfulness, and love.

"Jayber Crow, born in Goforth, Kentucky, orphaned at age ten, began his search as a "pre-ministerial student" at Pigeonville College." "Eventually, after the flood of 1937, Jayber becomes the barber of the small community of Port William, Kentucky. From behind that barber chair he lives out the questions that drove him from seminary and begins to accept the gifts of community that enclose his answers. The chair gives him a perfect perch from which...

Reissued as part of Counterpoint's celebration of beloved American author Wendell Berry, the five stories in Fidelity return readers to Berry's fictional town of Port William, Kentucky, and the familiar characters who form a tight-knit community within.

Overview: 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 land-from the intimate knowledge, love, and care of it. Sadly,...

Essays on Nate Shaw, Harry Caudill, Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, diversity, waste, eating, local culture, consumption, conservation, environmental concerns, and other topics.