World Made by Hand: A Novel

by James Howard Kunstler

book data

534 ratings, 3.45 average rating, 215 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		14%
4		35%
3		34%
2		12%
1		3%

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published

February 11th 2008 by Atlantic Monthly Press

binding

Hardcover, 317 pages

isbn

0871139782 (isbn13: 9780871139788)

description

In the best-seller The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler explored how the terminal decline of oil production had the potential to put industrial c...more

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06/07/08

Jill rated it:

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 pe...more

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08/11/08

Jordan rated it:

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 gia...more

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

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03/24/08

fbuser650222023 rated it:

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in April, 2008

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 w...more

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07/23/08

Dawn rated it:

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

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04/08/08

Erica rated it:

Read in April, 2008

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-...more

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06/19/08

Christina rated it:

bookshelves: abandoned

Read in June, 2008

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 ...more

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07/01/09

Mary rated it:

Read in June, 2009

I gave this book five stars not because it was well written- it wasn't - nor because the story was cohesive - it wasn't - but because the amount of thinking and discussion it generated was astonishing.

It takes place in the near future, after enough awful events in the world have resulted in the collapse of government, community infrastructure, and widespread communication. There's only intermittent electricity, no cars (because no gas, and no manufacturing of any kind), no wheat due t...more

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06/17/09

Jeb rated it:

Read in June, 2009

A post-apocalypse story that's not too heavy on the gloom.

The government has disintegrated and the lights have flickered out. Kunstler only alludes to the cause, which seems to be an amalgam of climate change and global battles over resources (mainly oil).

Parts of the country are as lawless and grim as Cormac McCarthy described in The Road, but other areas, like Union Grove, NY, are rustic and communal. World Made by Hand explores the tension between these two elements.
...more

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04/30/09

Lisa rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

Read in April, 2009

Yet another book where I was lured in by a good review/blurb, this one from NPR. Yet another disappointment.

The premise is very interesting. Set in a small town in upstate New York after apocalyptic events that have essentially disbanded the government and deprived everyone of oil and electricity, the lives of the townsfolk are disrupted one summer by a series of events.

The plot was interesting enough - right up until the end, where it got weird and then abruptly ended,...more

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04/12/09

Jill rated it:

bookshelves: 2009-reads

Synopsis:

In The Long Emergency celebrated social commentator James Howard Kunstler explored how the terminal decline of oil production, combined with climate change, had the potential to put industrial civilization out of business. In World Made by Hand, an astonishing work of speculative fiction, Kunstler brings to life what America might be, a few decades hence, after these catastrophes converge. For the townspeople of Union Grove, New York, the future is nothing like they thought ...more Synopsis:

In The Long Emergency celebrated social commentator James Howard Kunstler explored how the terminal decline of oil production, combined with climate change, had the potential to put industrial civilization out of business. In World Made by Hand, an astonishing work of speculative fiction, Kunstler brings to life what America might be, a few decades hence, after these catastrophes converge. For the townspeople of Union Grove, New York, the future is nothing like 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. Their challenges play out in a dazzling, fully realized world of abandoned highways and empty houses, horses working the fields and rivers, no longer polluted, and replenished with fish. With the cost of oil skyrocketing—and with it the price of food—Kunstler’s extraordinary book, full of love and loss, violence and power, sex and drugs, depression and desperation, but also plenty of hope, is more relevant than ever.

***

I really like the concept of this book. After war, the loss of oil, and disease ravage the United States, the residents of Union Grove have reverted to an agrarian society. Without electricity, their lives are intensely physical. In order to survive, the residents of Union Grove will need to learn to rely on each other and band together to keep their town from falling apart. The book is not as depressing as it sounds, and the reader is left with a feeling of hope at the end. However, there were a few things that bothered me that I just can’t let go of.

The bad guys were the stereotypical biker gang, albeit without bikes. They were tattooed and played songs by Nirvana and Metallica. Our hero, on the other hand, played folk music and spirituals (in fact, I couldn’t help but think of the soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou? as I read this book…it seemed very appropriate). It was very obvious that someone does not like rock, or even alternative, music. As one character states after listening to a rendition of the Nirvana song "Smells Like Teen Spirit": “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the world could just forget some of those really awful songs?”
It was often hard to ignore the fact that the author has an agenda. It’s obvious that he sees this future as having a good chance of happening, especially in the early parts of the book when he reflects on the world that was. It gets a bit tiresome.
Mary Beth Ivanhoe, the “precious mother” of the New Faithers, the cult-like group that comes to town. What the HELL was her purpose in the book?!? She isn’t mentioned until the last part of the book, and even then she only gets a few pages. The whole scene was weird and out of place, and I don’t get it. And don’t even get me started on the hives.
Jane Ann. Jane Ann is the wife of Loren, the town’s pastor and Robert’s best friend. Robert being our main character. Jane Ann and Loren seem to be husband and wife in name only, and Jane Ann turns to Robert for sexual comfort. That was a little weird, too…and at the end, something’s going on with Jane Ann, but do we find out what? No. Everyone else got an ending, but not Jane Ann. Actually, Mary Beth didn’t either, but since she only popped in for a brief howdy, that I can understand.
Obviously, someone needs to read this book so they can enlighten me on a few things. Despite my quibbling over some disturbing tendencies, it’s not at all a bad book. Or a downer. It’s an interesting proposal for our future. It’ll also make you want to learn a bit about cooking, gardening, and homeopathy…you know, just in case.
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04/10/09

Anne rated it:

This book surprised me. At first, I was pleasantly surprised by the pastoral setting in this post-peak oil world. It's a unique treatment of the dystopian concept that was pretty engaging for the first half of the book--and fully believable. It's not difficult to imagine that in a world where central government, transportation & the energy industry has collapsed, we'd have no choice but to go back to the land. That they seem to have reverted back to the language patterns of the frontier times a...more

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05/04/09

Grace rated it:

(review of isbn 0802144012)

bookshelves: book-club-books, fiction, read-in-2009

Read in May, 2009

I live in upstate New York. I'm not very familiar with Washington County, the primary setting of this book, but I am familiar with downtown Albany and the surrounding suburbs. I was pleasantly surprised by the accuracy in his geography of the area and references to state government until he spelled Duanesburg wrong (he spelled it Duanesberg), which really upset me because that's my hometown. I know that this may sound trivial, but if a local author is going to use his home region as the setting ...more I live in upstate New York. I'm not very familiar with Washington County, the primary setting of this book, but I am familiar with downtown Albany and the surrounding suburbs. I was pleasantly surprised by the accuracy in his geography of the area and references to state government until he spelled Duanesburg wrong (he spelled it Duanesberg), which really upset me because that's my hometown. I know that this may sound trivial, but if a local author is going to use his home region as the setting for a post apocalyptic saga, you'd think he'd spell the names of towns correctly.

Anyway...

As for the book itself - not a fan. The catastrophic events that led to this post apocalyptic world are shady at best. All I could gather was no one wanted to trade with the U.S. anymore and major cities were bombed or were struck my massive hurricanes, leaving them in chaos and/or uninhabitable. The idea that society could deteriorate so quickly didn't seem plausible to me.

Shadiness tends to be a theme with James Howard Kunstler - for example - this New Faith tribe that buys the high school and turns it into a self sustaining home. How did they find Union Grove? How did they manage to buy the high school without no one in town finding out? In a small town made even smaller by this strange Mexican flu epidemic, you'd think they notice a band of strangers looking at real estate. What about their "queen bee" who does nothing buy lounge in a bed eating corn bread and telling the future? And what Minor and Wayne Karp's identical wounds, except Karp's body shows no evidence of a bullet? Am I really supposed to believe that Jesus killed a man by mimicking gun shot wounds the man inflicted on another man?

James Howard Kunstler also does a great job of showing how women are virtually useless in a post apocalyptic society except for cooking, cleaning, and having sex with the available men. Women played no part in making town decisions or in solving town problems. Kunstler goes as far as to say, in regard to the town's board of trustees, "All the trustees are men; no women and no plain laborers. As the world changed, we reverted to social divisions that we'd thought were obsolete." (p. 101). As a woman, Mr. Kunstler, let me tell you one thing - I highly doubt that women would forgo all of the rights and freedoms we've fought so long and hard for over the last 150 years just because there is no oil and bombs decimated cities. If it's do or die time, you can be damn sure that I'll be out there doing instead of sitting at home waiting to die.

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01/05/09

Rawley rated it:

Read in January, 2009

I appreciate Kunstler's attempt to take his ideas from The Long Emergency and create a plausible storyline about life in the not-too-distant future. Kunstler's The Long Emergency is an excellent, well-researched wake up call to America about the consequences of peak oil and is well worth reading. Curiosity alone compelled me to read World Made by Hand. As much as I want to recommend this book, unfortunately Kunstler has no knack for fiction.

He obviously has put a lot of thought in...more

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03/15/08

Christina Ughrin rated it:

Read in March, 2008

I borrowed _World Made by Hand_ from the library yesterday and just finished it. I couldn't put it down. This a a very engaging look at life during/after the Long Emergency. Kunstler's own biases and assumptions are clear (including his disdain for suburbia). However,unlike others writing post-apocalyptic novels with a clear political agenda, _World Made by Hand_ stands alone as a poignant and engaging novel.

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05/04/09

Hope rated it:

Read in May, 2009

I rarely read post-apocalyptic books, but since this one wasn't your typical aliens / machines have taken over the world story it caught my eye. There was little of the background story - it mentions bombs in LA and Washington, lack of oil, global warming, and diseases as being the main causes. The book centers around a small town in New York, and the main character is a carpenter. The town has reverted back to a sort of early 1800's type of existence. There is no electricity, no cars, and no fe...more

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05/15/09

Ashley rated it:

Read in May, 2009

Okay, so I understand the reason for this book. I get the point it is trying to make. We need to be more self sufficient. The premise of this book is that something horrific has happened in the US - bombs, the Mexican flu, etc and it has sent the world as we know it back to the time of the settlers. There is no electricity, gas or anything of the sort. I thought the book was slightly boring and was tough to force myself through. The religious men in the book are criminals and religion as a whole...more

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03/13/09

Annie rated it:

bookshelves: book-club

Read in April, 2009

I thought this would be an interesting concept, and the first half kept me engaged. I never fully figured out all the events that transpired to turn our modern world into Robert Earle's world of self-sustainability, fragmented society, no electricity, no trade, and no communication. Were there really zero engineers left that were concerned with maintaining/recovering utilities or technology?

And while I understand Kunstler's choice to return society essentially to the US prairie d...more

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03/03/09

fbuser17814440 rated it:

Read in July, 2008

It is no secret that I really like JHK's works. His early literary career began in novels and then expanded to his much publicized works of non-fiction. I think he might have been a bit rusty in the genre after a long hiatus. Being an expert on out follies as a nation in regard to infrastructure and energy, his depictions of the post oil world were riveting if not frightening. Generally I liked the book, it was very thick on setting. I believe that was the whole thrust of his intent, therefor...more

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03/07/09

Carolyn rated it:

Read in January, 2009

This book is amazing. It sounds like a science-fiction futuristic novel, but I dont' really care for those. The book is very thought provoking. As I read it, I'd ponder --- day and night --- the little details of the book and our lives that would be (will be?) effected by the changing economy, possible pandemic, and our changing world/politics. For instance, we know how to do a lot of what is needed to live on our own and within our own community (we raise poultry, we garden/farm, we process...more

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05/13/09

Mistinguettes Smith rated it:

Read in January, 2008

Kunstler writes well but plots poorly. He was able to think well through the material consequences of an immediate post-petroleum world, but unable to imagine the social consequences of same. As a result, he resorts to a return to 19th century pastoral, replete with 19th century sex roles and technology, and an all-white, insular universe. The rising action the book is compelling, but Kunstler's imagination failed him at the crisis: he results to unnatural & supernatural resolutions to the most ...more

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