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  • The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice by Wendell Berry book cover
  • The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice by Wendell Berry book cover
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The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice

by Wendell Berry

Patriotism, prejudice, and the work of historical reckoning

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AlbakiReads Editorial

Patriotism, prejudice, and the work of historical reckoning

Wendell Berry connects the history of prejudice in the United States with dispossession: the displacement of Native peoples, unpaid labor, racial division, and damage to land-based communities. He argues that confronting these histories is essential to understanding industrialism’s effects on both the natural world and the country’s ideals. The book extends concerns Berry addressed in *The Hidden Wound* and *The Unsettling of America*, placing historical understanding at the center of its account of how the past shapes the present. Its proposed direction forward is guided by what Berry calls the “natural laws of affection.”

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in Wendell Berry’s social and political writing.
  • Readers exploring connections among prejudice, U.S. history, and dispossession.
  • Readers interested in how industrialism affects land and communities.

Themes

Prejudice and racial divisionDispossession and unpaid laborIndustrialism and the natural worldHistorical memory and patriotism

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Book overview

Wendell Berry has never been afraid to speak up for the dispossessed. The Need to Be Whole continues the work he began in The Hidden Wound (1970) and The Unsettling of America (1977), demanding a careful exploration of this hard, shared truth: The wealth of the mighty few governing this nation has been built on the unpaid labor of others.

Without historical understanding of this practice of dispossession--the displacement of Native peoples, the destruction of both the land and land-based communities, ongoing racial division--we are doomed to continue industrialism's assault on both the natural world and every sacred American ideal. Berry writes, "To deal with so great a problem, the best idea may not be to go ahead in our present state of unhealth to more disease and more product development. It may be that our proper first resort should be to history: to see if the truth we need to pursue might be behind us where we have ceased to look." If there is hope for us, this is it: that we honestly face our past and move into a future guided by the natural laws of affection. This book furthers Mr. Berry's part in what is surely our country's most vital conversation.

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