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Rating: 
Summary: Not the best Berry
Review: A small book with little development. Perhaps if your taste runs to that, it might be okay. I think I would find it a confusing introduction to Berry and hesitate to recommend it to newcomers to Berry. The second essay is particularly brief. Readers who do not know Berry might better sample essays in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, a collection that locates Berry in his particular landscape, and explicates his ideas about "Agrarian Economics" and "Agrarian Religion." The first essay is a series of twenty-seven numbered statements. It can be found online. The third essay contains some solid ideas. Movement efforts are often "insincere," Berry argues, in that they focus on policy or other people's behavior, not on the behavior that we can best change--our own. This, in a sense takes us back to the numbered statements which are advices for living towards a changed world. Berry is worth reading, but this does not seem a book for beginners nor for experienced Berry readers.
Rating: 
Summary: an eye opening analysis
Review: This book helped me to see how modern so-called self-named "First World" countries are guided by the worship of the dollar. One can take it to the next level and say that ultimately racial and class issues today are a result of this love of the dollar and that white supremacism in this world is based on it. In order to dismantle white supremacy you need to get to the heart of it's greed which creates a necessary lack of respect for humanity and ultimately LIFE on earth. God's creations are sorely put upon for the sake of vain greed. America has caused problems in this world and has yet to fully face them. I say this as an igbo woman born here in america being forced daily to realize things mainstream whites can and do ignore.
Rating: 
Summary: One the most profound books of the last decade!
Review: This is one of the most lucid, visionary, and authentic reflections on the events of September 11 that exists. But it is much more than that. The second essay, "The Idea of A Local Economy," must be recommended as a masterpiece of contemporary cultural criticism. I recommend this to anyone who cares about our children's future, our grandchildren's future, and anyone who wants to see the tragedy of that bleak autumn day with a clarity and honesty that is entirely lacking in the dominent media.A book for the ages!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: One the most profound books of the last decade!
Review: This is one of the most lucid, visionary, and authentic reflections on the events of September 11 that exists. But it is much more than that. The second essay, "The Idea of A Local Economy," must be recommended as a masterpiece of contemporary cultural criticism. I recommend this to anyone who cares about our children's future, our grandchildren's future, and anyone who wants to see the tragedy of that bleak autumn day with a clarity and honesty that is entirely lacking in the dominent media. A book for the ages!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Best work to date on 9/11
Review: Wendell Berry asks the right questions about the events of a year ago. Along with Noam Chomskey's 9/11, this is a must read.
Rating:
Summary: Simple, honest, and persuasive examination.
Review: Wendell Berry has set a new high-standard in texts dealing with the events of September 11. In this small collection of three essays, he poignantly and unsentimentally evaluates the source of the "terror" and proposes solutions that deal with its root causes in our own cultural practices. In particular, Berry addresses the very real threat to our democratic tradition posed by the current corporatist ideology and our senseless over-consumption. The destruction of the local economy, replaced with a dehumanizing and wasteful economy of low-quality disposable objects is a primary theme of this text as it is of so much of Berry's writing. He gently admonishes us to imagine a better way of doing things, to ignore the "Captains of Industry who tell us to be realistic". As Berry so wisely says, "reality, it seems, is a limited program" but it does teach us that we should not look for a bird's egg in a cuckoo clock.
Rating:
Summary: Simple, honest, and persuasive examination.
Review: Wendell Berry has set a new high-standard in texts dealing with the events of September 11. In this small collection of three essays, he poignantly and unsentimentally evaluates the source of the "terror" and proposes solutions that deal with its root causes in our own cultural practices. In particular, Berry addresses the very real threat to our democratic tradition posed by the current corporatist ideology and our senseless over-consumption. The destruction of the local economy, replaced with a dehumanizing and wasteful economy of low-quality disposable objects is a primary theme of this text as it is of so much of Berry's writing. He gently admonishes us to imagine a better way of doing things, to ignore the "Captains of Industry who tell us to be realistic". As Berry so wisely says, "reality, it seems, is a limited program" but it does teach us that we should not look for a bird's egg in a cuckoo clock.
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