WENDELL BERRY
Wendell Berry (1934 - present and going strong, we hope) holds a special place here at Whistlestop. For years we have enjoyed the experience of customers coming in and asking tentatively if we had any Wendell Berry, to which we answer confidently, "what area of his writings are you seeking? Essays, novels, or poetry?" We stock almost all we can (and we can order what little is missing). Berry is a clear strong voice for remembering your roots, thinking clearly and calmly in times of stress and danger, and living truly in relation to your family, your community, and your conscience. He articulates the philosophical and practical advantages of living locally (know local, eat local, shop local, read global). In our quest to fashion our website to be like our store, we thought it necessary to provide a special place for Wendell Berry.
Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition
Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition
[A] scathing assessment . . . Berry shows that Wilson's much-celebrated, controversial pleas in Consilience to unify all branches of knowledge is nothing more than a fatuous subordination of religion, art, and everything else that is good to science . . . Berry is one of the most perceptive critics of American society writing today." ―The Washington Post
"I am tempted to say he understands [Consilience] better than Wilson himself . . . A new emancipation proclamation in which he speaks again and again about how to defy the tyranny of scientific materialism." ―The Christian Science Monitor
In Life Is a Miracle, the devotion of science to the quantitative and reductionist world is measured against the mysterious, qualitative suggestions of religion and art. Berry sees life as the collision of these separate forces, but without all three in the mix we are left at sea in the world.