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The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry

by Wendell Berry

Essays on land, community, and the costs of consumerism

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AlbakiReads Editorial

Essays on land, community, and the costs of consumerism

Gathered from Wendell Berry’s decades-long writing on behalf of American lands and communities, these essays connect environmental questions to everyday work and local life. Berry’s experience farming in rural Kentucky informs his attention to the knowledge and responsibilities that grow from living on and working with the land. Across the collection, he challenges consumerism and the idea of progress when they come at the expense of local landscapes, cultural inheritance, and care for neighbors. The book brings environmental reflection together with questions of history, home, and how people might treat land and one another with greater respect.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in essays about nature, farming, and rural communities
  • Readers exploring critiques of consumerism and ideas of progress
  • Readers interested in the relationship between local places, cultural heritage, and environmental care

Themes

Land and communityConsumerism and progressFarming and local knowledgeCultural heritage and homeCare for neighbors and the natural world

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Book overview

The most comprehensive―and only author-authorized―Wendell Berry reader, "America's greatest philosopher on sustainable life and living" (Chicago Tribune)

In a time when our relationship to the natural world is ruled by the violence and greed of unbridled consumerism, Wendell Berry speaks out in these prescient essays, drawn from his fifty-year campaign on behalf of American lands and communities.

The writings gathered in The World-Ending Fire are the unique product of a life spent farming the fields of rural Kentucky with mules and horses, and of the rich, intimate knowledge of the land cultivated by this work. These are essays written in defiance of the false call to progress and in defense of local landscapes, essays that celebrate our cultural heritage, our history, and our home.

With grace and conviction, Berry shows that we simply cannot afford to succumb to the mass-produced madness that drives our global economy―the natural world will not allow it.

Yet he also shares with us a vision of consolation and of hope. We may be locked in an uneven struggle, but we can and must begin to treat our land, our neighbors, and ourselves with respect and care. As Berry urges, we must abandon arrogance and stand in awe.
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