Wendell Berry (b. 1934) is a writer whose life’s work has been dedicated to “what I value most in the world: the life and health of the earth, the peacefulness of human communities and households.” In essays both deeply personal and powerfully polemical, Berry speaks for a culture of stewardship and husbandry, for the welfare of rural people often forgotten and marginalized, and for the vital role of sustainable farming in preserving the planet as well as our national character. Berry’s writing combines the authority and wisdom of experience—he has lived on and farmed a hilly acreage in Henry County, Kentucky, on sustainable principles for more than half a century—with the grace and clarity of a great American prose stylist.

In this two-volume edition, such landmark books as The Unsettling of America and Life Is a Miracle are included in full, along with generous selections from more than a dozen other volumes, revealing as never before the evolution of Berry’s thoughts and concerns as a farmer, neighbor, citizen, teacher, activist, and ecological philosopher. Throughout he demonstrates that our existence is always connected to the land, and that even in a modern global economy local farming is essential to the flourishing of our culture, to healthy living and stable communities, and indeed to the continuing survival of the human species. Berry’s essays remain timely, even urgent today, and will resonate with anyone interested in our relationship to the natural world and especially with a younger, politically engaged generation invested in the future welfare of the planet.

from THE LONG-LEGGED HOUSE (1969)
     The Rise
     The Long-Legged House
     A Native Hill
from THE HIDDEN WOUND (1970)
     Chapters 4 through 8
from A CONTINUOUS HARMONY (1972)
     Think Little
     Discipline and Hope
     In Defense of Literacy
from RECOLLECTED ESSAYS (1981)
     The Making of a Marginal Farm
THE UNSETTLING OF AMERICA (1977)
from THE GIFT OF GOOD LAND (1981)
     Horse- Drawn Tools and the Doctrine of Labor Saving
     Solving for Pattern
     Family Work
     A Few Words for Motherhood
     A Talent for Necessity
     Seven Amish Farms
     The Gift of Good Land
from STANDING BY WORDS (1983)
     Standing by Word
     Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms
from HOME ECONOMICS (1987)
     Getting Along with Nature
     Two Economies
     The Loss of the University
     Preserving Wildness
     A Good Farmer of the Old School
from WHAT ARE PEOPLE FOR? (1990)
     Damage
     Wallace Stegner and the Great Community
     Writer and Region
     An Argument for Diversity
     The Pleasures of Eating
     The Work of Local Culture
     Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer
     Feminism, the Body, and the Machine
     Word and Flesh
     Nature as Measure
from SEX, ECONOMY, FREEDOM & COMMUNITY (1993)
     Conservation and Local Economy
     Conservation Is Good Work
     Christianity and the Survival of Creation
     Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community
from ANOTHER TURN OF THE CRANK (1995)
     Farming and the Global Economy
     Conserving Forest Communities
     Health Is Membership
LIFE IS A MIRACLE: AN ESSAY AGAINST MODERN SUPERSTITION (2000)
from CITIZENSHIP PAPERS (2003)
     A Citizen’s Response
     Thoughts in the Presence of Fear
     The Failure of War
     In Distrust of Movements
     The Total Economy
     Two Minds
     The Whole Horse
     The Agrarian Standard
     Conservationist and Agrarian
from THE WAY OF IGNORANCE (2005)
     Secrecy vs. Rights
     Contempt for Small Places
     Compromise, Hell!
     Charlie Fisher
     The Way of Ignorance
     Quantity vs. Form
     Renewing Husbandry
     The Burden of the Gospels
from WHAT MATTERS? (2010)
     Money Versus Goods
     Faustian Economics
from IMAGINATION IN PLACE (2010)
     Imagination in Place
     American Imagination and the Civil War
     Sweetness Preserved
     The Uses of Adversity
     God, Science, and Imagination
from IT ALL TURNS ON AFFECTION (2012)
     It All Turns on Affection
     About Civil Disobedience
from OUR ONLY WORLD (2015)
     Paragraphs from a Notebook
     The Commerce of Violence
     A Forest Conversation
     Local Economies to Save the Land and the People
     Caught in the Middle
     Our Deserted Country
     On Being Asked for “A Narrative for the Future”
from THE ART OF LOADING BRUSH (2017)
     The Thought of Limits in a Prodigal Age
     The Presence of Nature in the Natural World: A Long Conversation