World Made by Hand

Dec 20, 2010 karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: littry-fiction, the-end

this book is the grandma moses of all 4 star reviews; it came to its fourth star very late into its existence. it is like my slow-simmer appreciation of winesburg, ohio, but this one took much longer than two stories, this one took 3/4 of the book to win me and (this part pending) keep me.

and yet i still don't have a handle on the tone of this book. most of the postapocalyptic stuff i have read all takes place immediately after the event - like - "oh, shit, now what??" this book is the "now what...more

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Dec 13, 2012 Greg rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, x518x

The details are different, but the general feeling and my reaction are the same as for when I read Natural Acts: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I fucking get it, you don't like the way the world is. I should have started counting how many times he mentions decaying strip malls and useless stores. I'm not sure if I could count that high though.

There are many post-apocalyptic novels out there. This is another one. For the record, this is another book, one of many that the author has writ...more The details are different, but the general feeling and my reaction are the same as for when I read Natural Acts: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I fucking get it, you don't like the way the world is. I should have started counting how many times he mentions decaying strip malls and useless stores. I'm not sure if I could count that high though.

There are many post-apocalyptic novels out there. This is another one. For the record, this is another book, one of many that the author has written, that rely on the fruits of the world that he hates to produce and distribute, and probably also to write. Is this unfair to point out? Is it weird that I think of the author and the points he never seems to let up or tire at making being similar to those of a teenager saying 'fuck you mom and dad' while spending his time playing video games on the giant tv that those same parents bought for him? Author, social critic and blogger are, um, not exactly professions that are, um, you know, um contributing something to the world that you are supposedly preaching for. I know, I know, you have some great insight that needs to be shared, and you are opening peoples minds, serving as a self-appointed vanguard or something or other. Do aging baby boomers dream neo-Leninist dreams?

This book is a squishy liberal fantasy of what happens after society collapses. The book takes place in the fictional town of Union Grove, NY. Union Grove I'm pretty positive is actually Greenwich, NY – a town a bit west of Schuylerville, NY and probably about a twenty or thirty minute drive from Saratoga Springs. I was hoping when I started to read the book that it actually took place in Saratoga (being that it was the author's home for at least a while), but no luck there. It's still the fall of civilization taking place in my neck of the woods.

It's a fairly peaceful fall. The population has been more than decimated. And now some good folks live in this little town and they all engage in some labor that seems to be more like hobbies than activities for survival.

There are some undesirables, like the rednecks who have taken over the former landfill and sell scrap to the good citizens of Farmer Market-ville. The rednecks also enjoy Guns n' Roses, Metallica, Nirvana and using Larry the Cable Guy catch phrases. There is also a model of sustainable living who owns a vast estate that actually produce things and don't seem to exist by 'magic' (yes this is a not so veiled reference to the author's newest book). The weird thing to me is that this estate and the rednecks make sense, they are flourishing because of hardwork and ingenuity, and this shows in the book, even though the people who I'm guessing we are supposed to be rooting for are sort of a ineffectual middle-aged people whose survival baffles me.

The book isn't bad. But it's not really good either. Even if I leave aside all the disgust some of his rants fill me with and his seemingly hypocritical anti-science ramblings I still can't get too excited about this book. It's sort of one-dimensional, the characters are all fairly flat, the story is fairly predictable and the writing when it isn't being overly ranty and pedantic isn't that much better than your standard airplane sort of read. That said, the book does throw a bit of a curve ball about three quarters of the way through, and it actually takes on a kind of interesting edge. It's like the author decided that maybe I need to have some actual story here and not just a bunch of middle-aged people eat food and play folk music. Then it actually starts to read like an actual post-society collapsing sort of novel, like the realities of what would probably happen finally forced themselves to into the pages of the book, although to be fair (as in to not give too much praise) they are done with a sort of liberal 'oh the horror!' feeling that is in line with a book about the collapse of society where when the main character first comes into contact with a firearm he recoils in the horror that he would be the sort of person who would ever handle a gun. Yeah, it's a gun, you live in a dangerous world maybe having some form of protection would be a good thing.

As you can tell I didn't really like this book all that much. If it hadn't been set in the area I'm from I probably would have lost all interest in it before the book started to get sort of good, but because of the good stuff at the butt-end of the book, I'm kind of curious to see where he goes with the story in the sequel.

I'll probably be sorry that I read it though. (less)

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Jun 07, 2008 Jill rated it 2 of 5 stars

I read Kunstler's The Long Emergency and was affected for months, but after reading World Made by Hand, I realize that Kunstler suffers from a profound lack of imagination for that which isn't immediately in his intellectual/emotional/philosophical grasp. I could hang with the premise of a small community in the very near future trying to remake themselves after converging apocalypses have nearly wiped their population out and cut them off from other towns, but there is no way I buy that the peo...more

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Aug 11, 2008 Jordan rated it 1 of 5 stars

this book kind of sucked.

the story may reference peak oil issues but it doesn't particularly demonstrate how a declining oil supply effects a culture.

the really bad part is the main character who is sad and everyone in the town is sad and then wakes up, goes on an adventure, kills a guy, sleeps with or is kissed by every married or widowed girl in town, enlivens a whole town, and makes friends with a strange insect-like cult (with no explanation as to why they house a giant queen-bee-like southe...more

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Oct 31, 2011 Robert B rated it 3 of 5 stars

Of the three post-Apocalyptic tales I've read - The Stand, The Road and this one - this is my favorite, and not just because it's set in a region near where I happen to live (Upstate NY). It's not as dire as the other two (not necessarily a good thing) but I found it more thought-provoking. What if we had no more oil, LA and DC were nuked, and subsequent plagues knocked out a significant portion of the population? The short answer is no one knows. The pessimist says "We're all five meals away fr...more Of the three post-Apocalyptic tales I've read - The Stand, The Road and this one - this is my favorite, and not just because it's set in a region near where I happen to live (Upstate NY). It's not as dire as the other two (not necessarily a good thing) but I found it more thought-provoking. What if we had no more oil, LA and DC were nuked, and subsequent plagues knocked out a significant portion of the population? The short answer is no one knows. The pessimist says "We're all five meals away from murder" (bring on the cannibals in The Road) while the optimist sees us reverting to farming, fishing, carpentry, masonry and serfdom. Those who don't go insane carry on in various ways. The industrious survive - sometimes thrive - through community, agriculture, acoustic music, a little corn liquor and half-hearted religion. Some thrive through despotism, but luckily they live down the road apiece and they scavenge and sell useful junk.

What would you do? Who would you be? How would you get by? Would memories of the Old Times torture you or fade mercifully? Who would rise to leadership, and how? What would you EAT? (What would you smell like?)These are worthwhile questions sharply articulated by this book. A lot of attention is paid to how food is produced and prepared. I frequently got hungry while reading.

Also - the climate has gotten wackier, with blistering heat and unpredictable storms. But that is actually the least of everyone's worries.

Although Kuntsler doesn't give actual dates for anything (annoying)the book takes place about ten or so years after the nukes. The US economy has imploded, ports are shut down, and flu and encephalitis have ravaged the land. Electricity is gone, government buildings are shuttered and all modern conveniences - cars, phones, computers, malls, eventually radio - are extinct. The residents of Union Grove are scraping by, growing pot and poppies for relief (both medicinal and recreational) when a strange sect called the New Faith Church shows up in Amish-type wagons at the same time a crazed redneck shoots and kills a kid and a barge bound for an Albany trading post goes missing. These events spur the action in the tale, sending Robert - the protagonist, a widower whose teen son has vanished - on a fascinating trip with the ass-kicking, Jesus-loving sex-positive New Faithers. There are quite a few unexpected bends in the road.

That road, and the narrative in general, is described in detail both harrowing and gorgeous. Rutted, impassible pavement, tumbled bridges, candlelit nights, Dutch ovens, summer kitchens on the back porch, corn bread, desperate lovemaking. There are a few characters in the book who prefer the new life. Nature is rebounding in a lot of ways, both to the good and bad. The good was enough to give me pause.

The criticisms about the return to a pre-Women's Liberation way of life are sound. I know quite a few women who would do great in the fields and on the rooftops and quite a few guys who could do the basket weaving and child rearing. Just sayin'. And Robert passes over his 40-something lover Jane Ann for a nubile youngster (who is lovingly described) and we hear nothing about this from spurned Jane Ann. In a book that is all about consequences, this is glaring.

While Kuntsler has a lot of compelling ideas about what Mother Nature will do when the grid goes down, his grasp of actual womenfolk is lacking.

Also, everyone is white. WTF?

It's clear that Kuntsler doesn't care for rock and roll. The Union Grove folks play hymns and bluegrass, which is great, but when some rednecks attempt a Metallica song, it's described in withering detail.

At first I thought the Union Grove people were just too sanguine about their lot in life but then I recalled folks I know who've been through real tragedy, just unspeakable stuff. To a person, they found reserves of strength to move on. None of them lost their minds, at least not permanently. I do believe most of us possess that deep reservoir of strength, we simply don't want to look at it. Until we have no choice.(less)

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Apr 03, 2008 Ginny rated it 3 of 5 stars

I like the idea of this book maybe a bit more than the book itself. I feel as if the author could have thought much more deeply on the implications of a fuel-free economy in terms of every day life. I also disagree that the outcome would be as gloom and doom as this book. I was a bit frustrated 85% of the way through the book, feeling like I was following a bunch of cowboys around the wild west, but the end of the book got my heart racing and followed a good climax. Overall, pretty average writi...more

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Jul 25, 2008 Dawn rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 22, 2012 Cow rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: gzo-book-club

Meh.

I don't think this book even knows what it wanted to be. For the most part, it feels like a satire of post-apocalyptic fiction--flu meets nuclear bomb meets ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, or something--and suddenly upstate New York reverts to the 19th century. (More so than it already has.) None of the timelines add up to anything possible, but you quickly get to ignore that.

Except in between being satirical, it gets bizarrely dark and gruesome a couple of times, and also twists in some kind of strange...more

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Feb 21, 2012 Jess rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010

It's not very often that a book grabs me on page one and won't let me put it down until I've devoured the whole thing. This one did that. This world is incredibly vivid and all-too-possible these days, and the smallest details (like the guy who has an almanac and will come around and set your mechanical clock for you, or the electricity coming on just long enough to provide a burst of radio preaching from who knows where) are often the most arresting. The narrator is a complex character whose vo...more It's not very often that a book grabs me on page one and won't let me put it down until I've devoured the whole thing. This one did that. This world is incredibly vivid and all-too-possible these days, and the smallest details (like the guy who has an almanac and will come around and set your mechanical clock for you, or the electricity coming on just long enough to provide a burst of radio preaching from who knows where) are often the most arresting. The narrator is a complex character whose voice resonates beautifully, and the struggle to survive while still maintaining shreds of civilization pushes the plot forward with incredible power.

But come ON, Kunstler, where the hell are your strong women? Maybe five women in this book have actual lines, none of them talk to each other, and mostly what they do is make food for, then seduce, the men. There's one desexualized oracle figure whose one-page cameo is never explained. Pretty much every other woman in the story is a wife or a whore. None of them are central to the plot. I could possibly buy that 19th-century patriarchal values moved right in alongside the 19th-century technology, but that doesn't mean the women have to be mere objects. If your society is devolving into pioneer times, you have to make your women accordingly strong. Pioneer women were fighters. They didn't just hang back and putter around the kitchen until it was time to open their legs and indulge the menfolk. I know there are more stories set in this universe, and hopefully yet more to come. Put a strong female character into the action next time and I'll be a fan for life.

EDIT: I feel like I should probably add a coda to this review. A few weeks after I read it, I emailed the author to ask him (politely, of course) whether he'd considered that his female characters could be adding so much more to the story. His incredibly condescending response came a day or so later. In it, he suggested that I didn't like the book because I didn't understand it, and that I never would unless I "move[d] beyond the gender programming of [my] generation." So, uh, I guess I'm not going to read any more of his stuff. (less)

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Apr 19, 2011 Therese rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-books

Reminded me of good old-fashioned post-collapse SF from the '50s and '60s. Sadly, the book is marred by Kunstler's weird conceit that once all the oil is gone, everyone will revert to sexism, start dressing in old-timey clothes, and talk like extras from a bad Tom Sawyer movie. If the book had a thicker layer of the fantastic, he might have pulled this off. But as it is, the 19th-century trappings just pull the reader out of the narrative again and again. Plenty of reviewers have commented on Ku...more

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Apr 08, 2008 Erica rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you're reading these reviews you've heard all about the setting of this book so I won't repeat it but I will say that it really is the setting that makes this book. The author's vision of the future is interesting, thought provoking and unfortunately easy to imagine. I do wish he had gone further into telling us more about the lives of the survivors and the way they've come to live as it is very interesting. The downside of this book is in the story. The plot is somewhat flimsy and trite- enj...more

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Jun 19, 2008 Christina rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: abandoned

I'm three (short) chapters into this and seriously contemplating foregoing the rest of it. Long-winded descriptions of scenery - natural, back-to-the-land or looted and dessicated old building shells - and thin characterizations do not a compelling read make. The introduction of the character identified as the antagonist by the jacket flap has me thinking I know exactly where this is going and not at all sure that I want to spend the next several hundred pages along for the ride. I'll likely giv...more

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Apr 18, 2013 Francis Gahren rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: post-apocalytic, nonfiction

In the best-seller The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler explored how the terminal decline of oil production had the potential to put industrial civilization out of business. With World Made By Hand Kunstler makes an imaginative leap into the future, a few decades hence, and shows us what life may be like after these coming catastrophes—the end of oil, climate change, global pandemics, and resource wars—converge. For the townspeople of Union Grove, New York, the future is not what they thoug...more In the best-seller The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler explored how the terminal decline of oil production had the potential to put industrial civilization out of business. With World Made By Hand Kunstler makes an imaginative leap into the future, a few decades hence, and shows us what life may be like after these coming catastrophes—the end of oil, climate change, global pandemics, and resource wars—converge. For the townspeople of Union Grove, New York, the future is not what they thought it would be. Transportation is slow and dangerous, so food is grown locally at great expense of time and energy. And the outside world is largely unknown. There may be a president and he may be in Minneapolis now, but people aren’t sure. As the heat of summer intensifies, the residents struggle with the new way of life in a world of abandoned highways and empty houses, horses working the fields and rivers replenished with fish. A captivating, utterly realistic novel, World Made by Hand takes speculative fiction beyond the apocalypse and shows what happens when life gets extremely local.

Orion Magazine
ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISTS have blown up Los Angeles and DC. That puts the global economy into a smoking tailspin. A flu pandemic has wiped out a good third of the population, maybe more. Oil, or access to what’s left of it anyway, is as good as gone. The Chinese have reportedly landed a man on the moon, but that’s probably more legend than fact in these paranoid times. The federal government has retreated to Minnesota, of all places (because who would attack them up there?), and with resources limited, race wars have erupted across the South. The globe is no longer flat (sorry, Tom Friedman!). It’s as round and as large as it’s ever been.

Such is the fictionalized world envisioned by James Howard Kunstler in his new book, World Made by Hand. This isn’t a sci-fi view into a future one hundred or fifty years away. It’s anti–sci-fi, set maybe ten to twenty years out.

I first met Jim Kunstler in the fall of 2005, shortly after the publication of his best-selling nonfiction book The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. In it, Kunstler lays out a journalistic argument that the world is running out of cheap oil and that we will soon surpass the 50 percent mark of extractable oil.

The oil that’s left will be stretched thin by ever-increasing demand and industrial, political, and military competition on a global scale. In the geopolitical trade they call it “peak oil.”

So say sayonara to the suburbs and New Zealand ski vacations and all the big-dollar jobs that come along with an oil-fueled economy. Even if we weren’t at the “peak,” Kunstler argues, the global oil infrastructure is so fragile, and the globe so volatile, that any series of ill-timed catastrophes would be enough to send the world spiraling into chaos. When we met, Kunstler was traveling the country on a sort of Eve of Destruction book tour. Even in the sprawling exurban cities of Dallas and Houston, places that Kunstler had come to despise for their collective cluelessness about the future, he had developed a following of people who embraced his view that the world was about to become one fantastically miserable place to live.

But what exactly would that world look like? How would we survive without microwaveable chicken fingers, Sub-Zero refrigerators, flat-screen TVs, and taxpayer-funded law and order? Which brings us back to World Made by Hand. It is, in essence, a companion to The Long Emergency, but you don’t need one to appreciate the other. The story takes place in an upstate New York town called Union Grove, which sounds pretty much like Kunstler’s real hometown of Saratoga.

There’s an old center of town, but the ruins of suburban sprawl still litter the periphery. Union Grove has gone semi-feudal with many from the former middle class signing on as quasi–slave labor for an essentially benevolent landholder named Bullock. The rest of the townies scrape by doing odd jobs and farming, and are kinda-sorta led by Robert Earle, a former marketing executive with a Boston software firm who now makes his living by trading carpentry work in barter. A mysterious and well-armed group of religious zealots called the New Faith Congregation has shown up in town, having fled—and even taken part in—the race wars in Virginia and Pennsylvania. On the outskirts lives a tribe of outlaws called the Wayne Karp crew—identified by the wing-shaped tattoos over their eyebrows. The Karp clan does its best to control the drug trade, but its real profit center is a booming business in strip-mining tract homes and abandoned property for recyclable materials.

The battle lines between the rival groups are set, and the story of how this bloody summer unfolds makes the book worth reading. But it’s Kunstler’s ability to catalogue with an anthropologist’s precision what the world will look like that is just as compelling. Farmers have begun growing poppies, not for the drug trade, but to keep the local doctors stocked with powerful painkillers. The local dentist stays in business using a salvaged pulley drill, and patients bring in their old gold jewelry to use as cavity fillers in place of the high-tech composites used by dentists in ol’ 2007. The electricity doesn’t work anymore, but people in town still get water thanks to the gravity-fed reservoir. There’s no more Amstel Light but plenty of hard cider, home-brew, whiskey, and wine. No more Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine, but at the wake for a victim of one of Wayne Karp’s outlaws, there was “spinach cooked with bacon and green onions, radishes, rocket . . . and new beets.” There were coffee cakes made from ground butternut meal and honey. Sounds pretty great, actually!

Anybody who has ever read Kunstler or seen him live has experienced his excoriating jeremiad. But the soft underbelly of Kunstler’s rage against what he perceives as America’s obliviousness is that he’s actually a true believer in humanity. Yes, he really does think the future is going to look like it does in World Made by Hand, and that’s a scary, scary, place. But if you believe Kunstler, it doesn’t have to be half bad either.

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Mar 25, 2013 Amberleigh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Overall the author portrays his version of the world in a lifetime where no electricity will exist very well. The book was easy to read and understand, I was drawn into the story.

My Issues:

In the end of the book where they talk about a man being beaten I felt that the
details of such event went a little too far. Personally, as a reader my mind could of
filled in the details with my imagination, and perhaps not be pushed into a level of
detail that I am not sure I was ready to go there.

I would...more

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Mar 16, 2013 John Beck rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed, fiction

http://www.andalittlewine.blogspot.com/2012/08/book-review-world-made-by-hand-by...

My lovely wife brought me the audiobook of World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler, so we could listen to it together on our way to my 10 year high school reunion. And I have to think back that far to remember I book as terrible as World Made by Hand.

I love post-apocalyptic literature, from the deathly serious, like Lord of the Flies, to anything as glib as Slapstick. I think that this kind of science-fiction...more

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Feb 19, 2013 Carla Herrera rated it 3 of 5 stars

The World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler, published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 2008 is a work of post-apocalyptic fiction, that doesn't quite feel apocalyptic.

In some of the post-apocalyptic fiction I've read, humans become cannibalistic, preying upon others, reverting to an animal-like state. Or perhaps, more appropriately, worse than animal state, considering the ability to reason the choices they make to harm or not to harm others. In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, we read about humans...more

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Feb 12, 2013 Apocalyptic Fiction rated it 5 of 5 stars

World Made by Hand is a captivating post apocalyptic novel written by peak oil speculator James Howard Kunstler who is perhaps best known for his non-fiction work The Long Emergency. World Made by Hand provides some interesting speculation about life in a post-cheap-oil America where a series of terrorist attacks, subsequent wars and an uncontrolled pandemic brings the world economy to a grinding halt. The story follows Robert Earle through some of his post apocalyptic trials and tribulations in...more World Made by Hand is a captivating post apocalyptic novel written by peak oil speculator James Howard Kunstler who is perhaps best known for his non-fiction work The Long Emergency. World Made by Hand provides some interesting speculation about life in a post-cheap-oil America where a series of terrorist attacks, subsequent wars and an uncontrolled pandemic brings the world economy to a grinding halt. The story follows Robert Earle through some of his post apocalyptic trials and tribulations in a small northeastern New York town. While Union Grove is not without serious problems it has fared well relative to other regions, perhaps due to its more remote location and its distance from the terrorist attacks. Actually, in some ways it is thriving. With the recent arrival of a resourceful and well-organized religious sect, the town is in the midst of a rebirth of sorts, only as the title implies, this world is made without the benefit of machines. In some ways World Made by Hand explores some topics that aren’t often considered in this type of fiction. For example, with the often brutally shortened lifespans, particularly among the male population, the protagonist Robert sees more than his fair share of ”activity” with the ladies shall we say. Though there is a certain religious vein throughout the book, Robert, who is a basically good man, is not necessarily a subscriber to God and acts somewhere on the fringes of Christian morality. For the people left in this world, the abundance of “free love”, pot and alcohol offers them only a small reprieve from their violent and sometimes brutal existence. A certain ingenuity and pioneering spirit flows through the story that this reader found energizing and somehow inspiring. If people can accomplish so much with their bare hands through cooperation, surely we can do even more with all of the machinery and energy at our disposal. World Made by Hand is a good book that should be added to your “must read” post apocalyptic reading list!(less)

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Jan 05, 2013 Anthony rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's the kind of book that makes you want to build a house or sharpen an ax. It's true that you cannot prepare for the future if it's unknown, but Kunstler offers a vision of a possible future that is not the dreamy techno-heaven of Ray Kurzweil's Singularity nor the happy-hovering ideal of any futurist. It's a post-apocalyptic future. But it's not the metaphorical apocalolypse populated with zombies or brought on by four horsemen, or human-devouring machines. It's the real Apocalypse--the cards...more It's the kind of book that makes you want to build a house or sharpen an ax. It's true that you cannot prepare for the future if it's unknown, but Kunstler offers a vision of a possible future that is not the dreamy techno-heaven of Ray Kurzweil's Singularity nor the happy-hovering ideal of any futurist. It's a post-apocalyptic future. But it's not the metaphorical apocalolypse populated with zombies or brought on by four horsemen, or human-devouring machines. It's the real Apocalypse--the cards dealt to man by man himself.

For anyone that's read The Long Emergency or Too Much Magic, World Made by Hand provides a nice vivid image of what Kunstler's vision of post-paradigm shift America. Oil has been all used up and wars have been fought over the last remaining available energy resources. The story takes place in upstate New York several years after this catastrophe and the remaining people are trying hard to restore order to their small Hudson River community.

If you're not familiar with Kunstler, the Kunstlerian vision of America's future is dim and apocalyptic. At the end of his peak oil book (The Long Emergency), he paints a picture of a post-oil America that has divided into several distinct regions. Hit the hardest by this (currently pending) lack of resources are the Southwest (Silicon Valley and Southern California), the former Dust Bowl (think Grapes of Wrath), and the Sunbelt (the Old Confederacy). The luxuries and conveniences of these regions obviously depend much on cheap, abundant energy--Las Vegas, central air, Midwestern spread and suburban sprawl and all the motoring it depends on, etc. But what's less obvious is that the lifestyles that these regional communities of America have developed absolutely depend on these "conveniences." In the north regions (with the exception of the central plain), the people will still have to face a reversion of lifestyle but the side-effects will not be as severe. The land is better, the borders are safer, the climate more naturally bearable. Kunstler is especially fond of the Northeast and its history in establishing a rule of law. In a post-apocalyptic future, this is deadly important. And this is where this story takes place.

The major role players in the story are the men who have established their own order in this disintegrated society. The country they now live in has lost everything it had gained in the last 100 years. Without the power to run it, the industrial age has come to a screeching halt. It's hard to imagine how much loss this really means. The America that this story takes place in is just about as functional as the U.S. before the Civil War. The crucial difference is the characters are stuck with the memories of an age where they once had it all. The second most crucial difference is that the government no longer competently exists. What order had once reigned supreme has also diminished along with all of 21st century America's hopes and dreams.

World Made by Hand takes on a very Hobbsian tone. There are leaders and there are followers. And there are loners, too, who try to hold their own in their own loose-knit remainder of a community. The protagonist is a carpenter who lost his wife to encephalitis years ago (unavailability of medical treatments along with the x-factor of climate change have let disease run rampant) and his son who left the community of his own volition. He gets caught in the crossfire of a few local leader-figures: a strong-armed ex-criminal who has organized a gang-like community around the old garbage collection (now a treasure trove), a long-time landowner who now runs a feudal community of serfs on his fertile lands and in return gives them food and protection, and a newcomer religious cult-head from the Sunbelt moving his Holy community into the old high school.

I tend to want to give too much of stories away when I write book reviews so instead I'll leave it at a minimum: the plot runs its course. The action all feels pretty natural. I was wary of approaching fiction written by a so-called pundit--worried it would be too preachy. But if anything it gave me a clearer vision of where Kunstler sees the state of America today. His non-fiction will give you a better understanding of the facts that bother him and why he thinks they are leading to one dismal direction and not to a future-utopia. His non-fiction works are sardonic and a bit caustic. If you love the suburbs, love sugar-coated dreams of global-ism, or don't like to question the absolute infallibility of human ingenuity, then stay away. For me, though, his report on where we are today was one of the most clear-headed and beautifully elucidated wake-up calls to the ubiquitous infatuation with creating the Perfect World Order that I hear melting people's hearts and souls everywhere. There is hard work to be done. And wifi gadgets, something-from-nothing nano-tech machines and online banking can't fix everything like magic. Or who knows, maybe they will.

But the story: fiction, as it should, provides a means to escape into anther world that you can't quite experience in any other way. Robinson Crusoe provided dreams of escape into a world stripped from excess, a world made of real things and nothing much but one man's own human hands to bend and shape it how it must be bent and shaped. And maybe that's all World Made by Hand does too. But hey, at least it's not being preachy.

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Nov 13, 2012 Tina Cipolla rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have very mixed feelings about this author. Several years ago by random chance I picked up a book at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe AZ by Sharon Astyk called Depletion and Abundance (reviewed by me on GR), and that was an amazing book. Astyk pays homage to Kunstler's The Long Emergency which she says inspired her to write her book. On that strong recommendation, I picked up The Long Emergency and couldn't get past about 50 pages. I thought it was just terribly written and I just couldn't ge...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Ally rated it 4 of 5 stars

Wow. Just wow. I almost stopped reading this book because the vision it holds of the near-future was so realistic and believable that it upset me! Now if that's not a ringing endorsement for a post-apocalyptic novel I don't know what is. Unsurprisingly, Kunstler uses his extensive knowledge and experience with urban and community planning to vividly envision how one small northeastern town in upstate NY might fare after our world begins to crumble. The story begins not after some big global disa...more

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Jun 17, 2012 S. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1-my-classics

After looking through some of the other reviews for this book, I think a lot of people don't realize how precarious our lifestyles, our philosophies, and our convictions really are, how much they depend on the society we live in. And if our society were to come tumbling down, how a lot of us would go crashing down with it. I think "World Made By Hand" shows this and makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

Personally I found a lot to like in this story. The main character, Robert Earle, is no hero, a...more

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Apr 15, 2012 Jane Guyton rated it 3 of 5 stars

An imagined, future world after the United States' civic society has collapsed. An easy read, with interesting details as to how people might manage without benefit of electricity, gasoline, transport and all the other services that today we take for granted. Bombs in Washington DC and Los Angeles, and a devastating 'flu epidemic has reduced the population to a fraction of what it is today. People cannot communicate with anyone outside of their immediate community, and central government doesn't...more

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Dec 03, 2011 Will rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wow, there are certainly some odd reviews of this book. I, on the other hand, loved this book:

In short, it's the story of a man dealing with the natural change within a post-apocalyptic community once the worst of it ends and some semblance of society tries to get going again. It's richly and realistically set, and addresses the real challenges and probable situations these people would find themselves in, and finds realistic solutions.

It's perhaps the most 'optimistic' view of dystopia you'll...more

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May 15, 2011 Karla rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the story of an America (and only an America, the rest of the world seems to have been unaffected) dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century by two pretty small nukes and the Mexican flu. Yes, the country has changed irrevocably, and large numbers of people died, but apocalyptic? Not by the actual definition of the word, no.

To me, it presented a fairly feasible possible future when the oil finally runs out, but you need to be clear; this is the story of one very isolated little...more

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Mar 29, 2011 Donald rated it 3 of 5 stars

This novel written by James Kunstler is his dystopian presentation of the post-oil world set in a northeastern U. S. village. Certain social structures like cheap clean energy, most of the food found on today's grocery shelves, automobiles and roads for them, and the rule of law which, according to Kunstler's book, "The Long Emergency" are a direct function of cheap energy and will change as the world becomes bereft of petroleum.

In this story, people avoided the large cities which were no longer...more

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Mar 24, 2011 Michael Hays rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

A mixed bag at best. The writing is compelling and Kunstler paints an overall believable picture of a post-disaster America. Unfortunately, the novel is plagued by a multitude of problems from the get-go.

The most immediate problem is that Kunstler has populated his novel with flat, unexciting characters. Only the narrator (Robert Earle) is given any sort of depth. The other citizens of Union Grove are utterly two-dimensional; even Brother Jobe, a very interesting character who had enormous poten...more

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Oct 25, 2010 Kell rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who like Fantasy Western Apocalyptic genres

I really like these books. The paranormal subplots kind of threw me, though. I guess having only read his non-fiction work and his blog, I wasn't expecting a fantasy book.

The first time I read this book I was a little disappointed, I had just watched "Collapse" directed by Chris Smith. I wanted JHK to give me a blow by blow account of events we can expect and how to survive them. Instead, World Made By Hand shoves you a decade or so after all the "Long Emergncy"/teotwawki stuff has happened, an...more I really like these books. The paranormal subplots kind of threw me, though. I guess having only read his non-fiction work and his blog, I wasn't expecting a fantasy book.

The first time I read this book I was a little disappointed, I had just watched "Collapse" directed by Chris Smith. I wanted JHK to give me a blow by blow account of events we can expect and how to survive them. Instead, World Made By Hand shoves you a decade or so after all the "Long Emergncy"/teotwawki stuff has happened, and straight into the "new normal".

The second time I read it, I was able to just read the story, and I found I liked it, even the paranormal freaky bits. Although I found it hard to suspend my judgement on the anti-religion viewpoint. JHK has these characters he calls Christian, but their version of christianity and the Bible is so twisted and freaky, that it made me feel ill. I wish JHK had named the "New Faith" deity something other than Jesus.

A lot of people have problems with the role of women in this book. I would like to point out the book is in first person, narrated by a male character, who lives alone, in a society where the female population is limited. Of course the only women he interacts with sleep with him or mother him, (or both). This is just an extrapolated version of the way the sexes interact in reality. Even though we apparently have equality, women tend to do the larger portion of domestic duties, even if they have a job outside the home. It stands to reason,that if you take away the desk job, electricity, the suv, hot running water, the washer/dryer, fast food and law and order, women will be spending more time at home, and less time in the public sphere. I'm fairly certain women are not "forbidden" to be in on council meetings as some people have written. The women are just so busy they couldn't be bothered to go.

Another point brought up is the unresolved ending. Kunstler mentioned in a podcast interview, kunstlercast.com, that his idea was to write 4 books, one for each season. So there are 2 more to come.

Overall, this was a nice story. Robert Earle is an apocalyptic version of Pa Ingalls. Much, much easier to read than McCarthy's "The Road". The premise of a post carbon society, while not an earth shattering concept to Transitioners, serves as a good vehicle for peak oil discussion out in the wider McWorld, always a good thing. Mostly though, I get the feeling that JHK just had fun writing this. A world where all his economic/environmental/political predictions have occured, but "stuff" still happens. (less)

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Mar 20, 2010 Joe rated it 4 of 5 stars

A post-apocalyptic oil doomer book? What's not to like?!

In this book, US society has reverted to a mostly pre-oil age. A middle eastern war, plus a few well-placed attacks on the US, has caused American government to fall. There's no large central government, no electricity, no fuel to run engines.

This book does a pretty good job of describing what day-to-day life might be like in those sorts of circumstances. The main character has to deal with lawlessness, strangers moving in, changing ideas o...more

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Feb 18, 2010 Shushlibrarian rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: peak-oil, dystopia

Though this book was long on dialogue and short on character development, I did end up enjoying it despite myself. Bits of it were clever, but there were certain scenes that seemed out of place, unless a sequel is forthcoming. For instance, when the New Faithers come to the community and buy the local high school building, Robert is given a tour by Brother Jobe (leader of the New Faith community). He is allowed to meet...what the heck did they call her...Great Mother (Mary Beth Ivanhoe)? Who app...more

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Nov 19, 2009 Peter rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, current-affairs

James Kunstler sets out a near future in which 1) the offshore oil doesn't flow anymore 2) unnamed events have conspired to remove much of what passes as government 3) people are coping, somewhat. It is set in upstate New York in the little town of Union Grove.
The first part moves slowly, I thought, as Kunstler spends a lot of words telling of the changes that result to our happy-motoring society when the fuel is no longer freely available. He and many others have set out why our present lifesty...more

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