The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

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The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

by Wendell Berry

4.36 · rating details · 753 ratings · 123 reviews

Since its original publication 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. But today's agribusiness takes farming out of its cultural context and away from families, and as a nation we are thus more estranged from the la...more

Paperback, 246 pages

Published November 1st 2004 by Sierra Club Books (first published 1978)

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Oct 16, 2007

David rated it

Recommends it for: anyone who has felt emptiness in shopping malls

maybe you'll find this at a garage sale in a beat up box for twenty-five cents. you'll pull it from the box. rub two dimes and five pennies together. you'll read it and research rain barrels. you'll sell that book to some used bookstore. you might. and a thin bookstore employee will set it on a shelf where some manicured hand might find it and bring it back to her loft. maybe she'll turn the pages and sigh at her consumption. maybe. or maybe she wont. maybe she'll walk more. and ride her bicycle...more

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Nov 28, 2007

heather rated it

Shelves: agriculture, non-fiction, change-your-life-or-your-mind

Every once in a while, a book comes along at the right place and at the right time, and that book has the power to change your life. This was that book for me. It moved me out of the city and into the country, and inspired me to grow food for people. It changed the way I view my relationship to the earth, and my responsibility to it. Don't read this book if you want to live comfortably with your current worldview.

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May 13, 2007

Greg rated it

This book is the classic that all Wendell Berry readers should read first. It goes through his ecological ethic and his belief that morality and ecology are inseparable; that our disconnection from the earth and our disconnection from each other are part of the same problem. This quote from his essay Think Little is a perfect introduction to his philosophies. See [http://www.msu.edu/~kikbradl/little.html]

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Most of us, for example, not only do not know how ...more

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Nov 08, 2011

Elise rated it

I was eager to read this book for a couple of reasons: 1) Nick's really into W.Berry, and 2) I happened upon an Amazon review of a more recent book of his, and the reviewer wrote that she and her husband had passages from "The Unsettling of America" read at their wedding. Cool!

I found myself agreeing with WB a ton, so much so that I revived my practice of jotting down favorite passages into a little notebook. I especially loved the section in which WB discusses "The ...more

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Aug 04, 2011

Xiaomin Zu rated it

I appreciate Berry's keen observation on the link between culture and agriculture, the body, mind and the earth. I find myself agree with him on many issues. However, his obliviousness on the unbearable oppression on women in any agricultural society (or better patriarchical society) makes me angry. It is true that industrialization destroyed the meaning of household and human's meaningful connection to earth and further oppresses women. But such sexual oppressions are not brand new, it is merel...more

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Apr 06, 2010

Jude rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: thisishowwedoit

(clipped from note to friend) this goes back so far for me - living on the farm and then in the little farm house in SE Ohio. the years of critical thinking were just beginning. i loved WB's ideas so much AND i was also beginning to read feminism - i had just read the Women's Room. I got michael to read it too. Michael: see - it is all about individual integrity (WB). Jude: but how can any offspring of an innately unequal union achieve integrity?(WR) It was wild. I remember going to see WB in O...more

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Apr 04, 2010

Randy rated it

Shelves: non-fiction

I have just finished my third reading of this powerful essay. I am a recent discoverer of Wendell Berry. It amazes me how much of what he writes resonates deeply with my experience.

When I discover an author I enjoy, I often try to catch up on his past work. With Mr. Berry this is no easy task since he is a hard working writer with a 50 year head start on me. After devouring 6 of his books, I realized that he is deserving of study in addition to pleasure reading. So I have began to s...moreI have just finished my third reading of this powerful essay. I am a recent discoverer of Wendell Berry. It amazes me how much of what he writes resonates deeply with my experience.

When I discover an author I enjoy, I often try to catch up on his past work. With Mr. Berry this is no easy task since he is a hard working writer with a 50 year head start on me. After devouring 6 of his books, I realized that he is deserving of study in addition to pleasure reading. So I have began to study what he has to say. Here is how I go about it. I read once for pleasure. I read a second time to highlight the sentences that are most resonant for me. Then, I copy the selected quotes by long hand into a journal of sorts. In this book, I found over 80 quotes that I consider of the highest quality.

I am happy to get one or two good ideas from any book I read. But Wendell Berry is offering me the chance to:
1) more closely examine my values;
2) find connections between my experience, my values, and the world I inhabit;
3) look at my life with an eye to improving my behavior;
4) consider the connections that Mr. Berry has made between his values and observations and the wider world around us.

Here is an example pulled pretty much at random from my notes, from Chapter 5, 'Living in the Future: The "Modern" Agricultural Ideal', pg. 56. "What has drawn the Modern World into being is a strange, almost occult yearning for the future." Of course the entire book "The Unsettling of America" provides Mr. Berry's context for this sentence. But here is, in part, what just this one line means to me.

I was born and educated into the Modern World. Indeed, the future has been an unquestioned ideology full of Utopian dreams. I was and still am fed a calorie rich diet of what the future will bring. Only now I have lived 6 decades and I can better discriminate what is from what is promised. Yet, just examining this 'yearning for the future' that I have unquestioningly accepted as normal, shows me that the future as it has been sold to us is far more snake oil than substance. New is not the same as progress. Immediate change has no true way to be measured as improvement (that takes time.) Technology is thrown at us with very little attempt to assess its lasting value. Blind faith in the future is not supported by a careful examination of the unfulfilled claims that were made for the future even in the recent past. With this one sentence, Mr. Berry has challenged me to take a primary cultural assumption and hold it up to the light of my own experience and see the truth of the claims that have been thrown at me every day of my life.

The power of this and most all of the essays I have read by Mr. Berry, is that I am inspired to improve myself by the simple means of bring my behavior more in line with my values. Here is one example of this effect.
I am a dreamer and most years I begin with big ideas. Most of these big ideas never get out of my head. The few that get started die sooner or later, usually due to what I learn as I pursue the ideas, though also, due to the enormous energy it takes to even begin anything big. This January I was at it again, juggling the big to see which I would select as the favored new dream, when a Wendell Berry inspired notion popped up. What would happen if I concentrated instead on small ideas?

I immediately defined a small idea as something I could begin immediately with the resources I already have. Within 30 minutes I had 7 small ideas. Here are the 7 words that stand for each idea: bike, carve, garden, grandchildren, house, local, and nature. In over ten weeks I have not subtracted or added to this initial list. I have done a lot with a few of these, a few things with most of the others, and one still awaits my attention. Granted that 2 months is not much time, but I am having great fun with this whole 'small idea' approach.

The big ideas are like TV ads, clamoring for my attention, and promising me the sun, moon, and stars. The small ideas are all things I have tried, that I enjoy, that are simple and fulfilling, that are amazingly low tech and green, and do not beat me up if I let them slide by for a while. In fact, the reason most of them made the list is because, in spite of months up to decades of neglect, they are lovely projects that waited patiently for me to come back.

Wendell Berry is certainly not for everyone. But he writes what I need to read, to ponder, to absorb. I firmly believe that every American or person being influenced by American ideologies should give Wendell Berry a read. If he is not for you, you will know it after the first essay or first chapter of book length essay such as "The Unsettling of America." But if he does speak to you, you could benefit in ways that you most need.(less)

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May 03, 2009

Julia rated it

Shelves: foodie-stuff, whole-earth

So if you've read anything that Barbara Kingsolver or Michael Pollan have written about food recently (which is quite a bit), you'll find that reading Wendell Berry is like going straight to the source, but about the larger picture of food production, agriculture, communities, society, and life in general. Berry wrote "Unsettling" in 1977, and it is absolutely terrifying and surreal how prescient he was then, and how important what he said still is for us today. Berry is a holistic thi...more

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Sep 04, 2011

Katherine rated it

Recommended to Katherine by: Scripps Book Club

Shelves: read-non-fiction

A series of essays written in the late 70's on the ethical and moral impact on our culture of large scale agriculture and the general divorce of most people from the land and the source of their food and visa versa. The consequences of cutting the millenium old "cycle of life". A lot of what he says rings true and certainly did for me and many others in our more idealistic youth. My main issue with the book and the ideas is how changes can be made to restore the "balance" in ...more

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Feb 24, 2010

blake rated it

Shelves: anthropology-sociology

A great, although uneven, criticism of the reigning agricultural and cultural mentality in the U.S. It's impressive that Berry wrote this more than 30 years ago since the argument seems just as timely today. The first two and last two chapters were the strongest. In between, he gets into an abstract discussion on the relationship between our connection to the land, ourselves, and other human beings. The vagueness of some of his terminology and expressions in these chapters resulted in my los...more

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Jul 26, 2011

Kerith rated it

This book was a gift to me from my friend Geoff some years ago, and my first full length Wendell Berry read -- though I had read essays. It was a very difficult book to read, mainly because it was about farming and agriculture, a subject I know little about.
He blames the "unsettling of America" on the mechanization and subsequent loss of the small family farm. "Agribusiness" and corporet farms arose to take the place of these farms, leading to the death of rural areas and t...more

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Jun 05, 2009

Nomi rated it

Shelves: nonfiction

Great collection of essays from the 70s most of which still resonate today. Berry comes across somewhat patriarchal but his messages about the importance of connecting with and valuing our land (understanding our food supply and cultivating an awareness/sense of place), not looking to technology for salvation/emancipating ourselves from our dependence on our cheap plastic consumer economy and its promotion of cheap fast labor instead of skilled, appreciating the knowledge of our ancestors, parti...more

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Dec 16, 2009

W. Bradford Littlejohn rated it

Absolutely fabulous collection of essays, even if you know nothing about agriculture. Goes to the roots (pardon the pun) of our current cultural and social malaise in fresh, creative, and insightful ways. My only complaint is how thin on theology it is, and how little he discusses the possible spiritual origins of some of the problems he explores.

Also, I do wonder how convincing this book would be to those who don't already share many of Berry's presuppositions, as I did (though ...more

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Nov 12, 2009

John Caneday rated it

Shelves: 2009, favorites

This is a wonderful, subversive book on culture, technology, and agriculture. Berry has in view the modern technological and industrial methods of farming that have wrecked havoc on our communities, our health, our land, and our future. Berry argues against the modern attempts to industrialize farming and create an urban leisure class, demonstrating their anti-human foundations and consequences.

Industrial farming has separated people from where they work and where they live, result...more

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Jul 13, 2010

Jordan rated it

Shelves: environmental

i can't stop thinking about this book. i feel like joining a agro-communist 1970's cult.

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Feb 09, 2012

David rated it

A telling and insightful exploration of how business and politics combine, written from the perspective of the (now vanquished) non-corporate farmer. I thought it was clear, even if the arguments were not always compelling. The language, however, was both beautiful and precise - a rare combination, but one that was appreciated even if the book hadn't been dealing with such a topical and important subject.

The book isn't just about agriculture, it is about how the government abuses corpo...more

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Oct 02, 2011

Stacy rated it

Shelves: environmental, food-writing, health, recommendations

Have you ever read an obscure book that no one you know has heard of, and felt that it was so good that it should be required reading for every human being? That's how I felt about this book.

Wendell Berry is a hero for many, including Barbara Kingsolver, who references many of Berry's ideas in her novel "Animal Vegetable Miracle". I've been meaning to get into his stuff for quite some time, and when I read this book it resonated with so many things I have believed or though...more

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Aug 11, 2010

R. rated it

Shelves: american-history

This is a prescient but still relevant treatise on America's attitude towards agriculture and land-use. I read this book on a weekend that saw the sale of the oldest family farm in the United States; Tuttle Farm in NH had been past down from father to son since 1635. But alas... trends that upset Berry in the 70s have reaped their awful harvest, and it's barely edible. Big agribusiness, supported by big government, have won. While some of the specifics Wendell discusses are dated, his philosophy...more

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Oct 22, 2011

Verene rated it

This is a great book in which Berry argues that our inability to face both agricultural and cultural challenges responsibly causes Americans to be totally disconnected from our food, each other, and the Earth. This of course results in a new set of agricultural and cultural challenges; even so, we appear to be treating the symptoms (poorly, at that) instead of the cause. (The book somewhat surprisingly doesn't focus much on the details of the environmental impact and imbalance of irresponsible a...more

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Jun 17, 2011

Kate rated it

Shelves: read-in-2011, nature-writing, ecology

"The Unsettling of American is Wendell Berry's probing and personal inquiry into the way in which we use the land that sustains us, and an expression of profound awareness that farming cannot be considered separately from the larger culture. His provocative suggestions for change are by turns passionate and eloquent, here is a book that gathers urgency for today's troubled society."
~~back cover

When I was doing my upper division course work at UC Santa Cruz, there was no...more"The Unsettling of American is Wendell Berry's probing and personal inquiry into the way in which we use the land that sustains us, and an expression of profound awareness that farming cannot be considered separately from the larger culture. His provocative suggestions for change are by turns passionate and eloquent, here is a book that gathers urgency for today's troubled society."
~~back cover

When I was doing my upper division course work at UC Santa Cruz, there was no graduate program offered in my major. Nonetheless, several graduate level courses were offered. I took them all eagerly. One of them knocked me on my bottom! The course was on transhumance. The syllabus was 3" thick, of xeroxed articles from professional journals. The reading assignments were brutal -- 5 or 6 articles at a time. And you better have read them -- they were discussed in class. And class was small -- no hiding out in the back row. There wasn't a back row. Even worse, my mentor was teaching the class -- a clear fiat to perform and perform well.

I struggled with those damn readings. It took me hours to get through each one. I constantly felt behind, consequently dull, lumbering, inadequate. Eventually I realized that I was struggling so because I had never read anything about transhumance before, and suddenly I'd been thrown off the bank into the deep water of the cutting edge of theory. No wonder I was struggling -- I didn't have any of the foundation, the resonances, didn't know the paths through the jungle. My mentor, of course, could read those articles in minutes, appreciating the nuances as she went.

This book was somewhat of the same experience for me. It read like a textbook, or a professional journal. Indeed, he's been a university professor (amongst many other things -- he's a true Renaissance man), which explains the tenor and depth of his language. I struggled with the language, and of course that made it difficult to unlock his ideas. But I'd waited so long to read Wendell Berry -- no matter how much I wanted to put it down, I needed to finish it, to be sure I got it all.

I'm glad I did.

The crux of the book is that agribusiness and the US Dept. of Agriculture are in bed together, the one aiding and abetting the other. And agribusiness is killing the land. Small diverse personal farms are the only way to save or restore the land. Agribusiness will drain all productivity and make the land unusable. He takes a lot of words and a lot of examples to support this hypothesis. Because he's passionate about it. He thinks it's a matter of life or death.

And it is. But I doubt that many will be persuaded by this book, which is offputting in its complexity and obscurity.(less)

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Dec 20, 2009

Marianne rated it

Berry makes some fantastic, insightful sociological observations about modern American culture and agriculture. Namely, its failings of community, conservation, consumption, specialization, and entertainment. I can't lay all the fault for the pattern of cultural or agricultural disintegration in our society as easily as he does on the doorstep of "agribusiness." I blame it on sin and than man is fallen, not just because we aren't all farmers any more. And, yes, this fingers into agr...moreBerry makes some fantastic, insightful sociological observations about modern American culture and agriculture. Namely, its failings of community, conservation, consumption, specialization, and entertainment. I can't lay all the fault for the pattern of cultural or agricultural disintegration in our society as easily as he does on the doorstep of "agribusiness." I blame it on sin and than man is fallen, not just because we aren't all farmers any more. And, yes, this fingers into agribusiness and every other facet of culture Berry remarks on. But I found his insights and observations to be compelling.

"The disease of modern character is specialization...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 here very quickly here. There are, for instance, educators with nothing to teach, communicators who have nothing to say... Specialization is thus seen to be a way of institutionalizing, justifying, and paying highly for calamitous disintegration and scattering-out of the various functions of character: workmanship, care, conscience, responsibility. Even worse, a system of specialization requires the abdication to specialists of various competencies and responsibilities that were once personal and universal...This supposedly fortunate citizen is therefore left with two concerns: making money and entertaining himself. He earns is money, typically as a specialist, working an eight hour day at a job for the quality or consequences of which someone else - or, perhaps more typically, nobody else - will be responsible. And not surprisingly, since he can do so little for himself, he is even unable to entertain himself, for there exists an enormous industry of exorbitantly expensive specialists whose purpose is to entertain him...The fact is, however, that this is probably the most unhappy average citizen in the history of the world." p. 19-20

"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." p. 52

"We became less and less capable of sensing ourselves as small within Creation, partly because we thought we could comprehend it statistically, but also because we were becoming creators ourselves of a mechanical creation by which we felt ourselves greatly magnified...Why after all should we get excited about one mountain when one can see almost as far from the top of a building, much farther from an airplane, farther still from a space capsule?" p. 100

"And it is clear to anyone who looks carefully at any crowd that we are wasting our bodies exactly as we are wasting our land. Our bodies are fat, weak, joyless, sickly, ugly, the virtual prey of manufacturers of medicine and cosmetics...After the games and idle flourishes if modern youth, we use them only as shipping cartons to transport our brains and our few employable muscles back and forth to work." p.108(less)

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Sep 19, 2009

Kristin rated it

My sister and I both read this book our Junior year of high school. I'm 26 now and she's 29...and we still talk about it. It discusses basically how we divorce ourselves from our actions and it's consequences on the earth by putting them in seperate spaces away from our daily lives. It seriously strikes a chord with me hearing common sense being put into words--we can't be surprised by the problems we are encountering in modern society knowing that we have chosen to live this way all along. ...more

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Jun 19, 2009

Scott rated it

Shelves: 2009

Have I mentioned that Wendell Berry is my new hero? Well, he is. As I read I am frequently and utterly shocked by the fact that the guy wrote this over 30 years ago. You couldn't write something more insightful given knowledge of all that has transpired since. Oh wait, I am only on p.27, I need to stop raving.

I finished this book almost a month ago now. I was tempted to start over and read it again immediately, but I decided against it. I don't believe I have ever felt the need...more

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Dec 08, 2009

Hans rated it

Shelves: history, economics, inspirational, paradigm-shifting, political, social-commentary, philosophy, favorites

Social Critic extraordinaire. This book helped me understand how the role of agriculture permeates through almost every aspect of our lives. I had no ideas all the implications that might entail.

Like the battles of an individual soul, culture (the societal soul) also wages war against itself. The most recent and prominent contenders in this fight for the collective soul are between business and agriculture. One has its center of all relationships built on money and economics whil...more

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Jan 13, 2010

David Mueller rated it

These essays should be required reading not only for university students but especially policy makers and leaders of the agribusiness and biotech sectors (though I doubt they could stomach it). While Berry´s focus is modern agriculture, the precepts of his philosophy are far reaching and deal directly with our moral responsibilities to the earth and one another. Despite the broad scope of his criticism, Berry´s style is plain spoken and easy to comprehend. A bit preachy at times but never small ...more

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Aug 30, 2011

Debbie Ensign rated it

This is a profound and great book about how agribusiness has despoiled our land and made us even more dependent on the petrochemical industry. It is wise and alarming. It is about the exploitation of the many for the benefit of the corporations, the rich, and the powerful. This is the first time I've read anything by Wendell Berry, and I'm awed by the breadth and depth of his thinking. I wish this book could be "required reading" for all Americans.

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Oct 31, 2009

Dave rated it

Shelves: read-in-2009

Berry makes a pretty good case for a different kind of agriculture. He admits that his evidence is almost purely anecdotal, but he's still convincing. Many of the problems he identified back in the 70s are still worrisome today, and for me, that's the greatest testament to the usefulness of what Berry has to say.

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Mar 25, 2008

Sean O'Neil rated it

Recommends it for: see above

Recommended to Sean by: Eric Jacobsen

I read this book during a 2 year experiment with Christian thought and faith. Of those authors I read during that time, only Wendell Berry and CS Lewis impressed me. This book impressed me the most. Wendell Berry's approach to the essence of human community, the value of independent farming, and the destruction of those things at the hands of corporate agribusiness is filled with wisdom, passion and empathy. He's also a fine writer. I would recommend this book without reservation to anyone ...more

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Mar 15, 2010

Alana rated it

Really enjoyed the topics Berry tackled in this book. He can be a little wordy at times but if you can muddle through, definitely worth the effort. Really opens your eyes to the concept of sustainable farming and supporting local farms as well as just taking pride in what ever you do.

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Dec 16, 2010

Steve rated it

I think this goes deeper than any supposed environmental or politically conservative book out there. And the reason for that is because it goes into the heart of what Wendell Berry calls "man's relationship with the earth." He self-consciously does not write like a specialist, spewing out statistics and facts ex cathedra. It has such wonderful clarity that a person like myself who has no understanding of farming, agriculture or agribusiness can really appreciate the weight of his commo...more

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About Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry is a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet. He was born August 5, 1934 in Henry County, Kentucky where he now lives on a farm. The New York Times has called Berry the "prophet of rural America."

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“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.” — 3 people liked it

“If we do not live where we work and when we work we are wasting our lives and our work too.” — 2 people liked it

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