Wendell Berry Books In Order

Port William Books In Publication Order

  1. Nathan Coulter (1960)
  2. The Wild Birds (1986)
  3. Remembering (1988)
  4. A World Lost (1996)
  5. Two More Stories of the Port William Membership (1997)
  6. Jayber Crow (2000)
  7. That Distant Land (2002)
  8. Hannah Coulter (2004)
  9. Andy Catlett (2006)
  10. A Place in Time (2013)

Port William Membership Books In Publication Order

  1. A Place on Earth (1966)
  2. The Memory of Old Jack (1974)

New Patriotism Books In Publication Order

  1. In the Presence of Fear (2001)
  2. Citizens Dissent (2006)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. To know the dark (1989)

Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order

  1. The Discovery Of Kentucky (1991)
  2. How Ptolemy Proudfoot Lost a Bet (1992)
  3. Whitefoot (2008)

Collections In Publication Order

  1. Broken Ground (1964)
  2. November Twenty Six Nineteen Hundred Sixty Three (1964)
  3. Openings (1968)
  4. The rise (1968)
  5. Findings (1969)
  6. Farming, a Hand Book (1970)
  7. The Country of Marriage (1973)
  8. Sayings & Doings and an Eastward Look (1975)
  9. Horses (1975)
  10. Kentucky River (1975)
  11. Clearing (1977)
  12. The Salad (1980)
  13. The Wheel (1982)
  14. A Part (1983)
  15. The Collected Poems, 1957-1982 (1985)
  16. The wild rose (1986)
  17. I go from the woods into the cleared field (1987)
  18. Sabbaths (1987)
  19. The Landscape Of Harmony (1987)
  20. Traveling at Home (1989)
  21. Fidelity (1992)
  22. Watch With Me (1994)
  23. Entries (1994)
  24. Three on Community (1996)
  25. A Timbered Choir (1998)
  26. The Gift of Gravity (2003)
  27. Given (2005)
  28. Window Poems (2007)
  29. The Mad Farmer (2008)
  30. Leavings (2009)
  31. The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford (2011)
  32. New Collected Poems (2012)
  33. This Day (2013)
  34. Terrapin (2014)
  35. A Small Porch (2016)
  36. The Peace of Wild Things (2018)
  37. The Farm (2018)
  38. Down in the Valley Where the Green Grass Grows (2019)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. The Long-Legged House (1966)
  2. The Hidden Wound (1970)
  3. The Unforeseen Wilderness (1971)
  4. A Continuous Harmony (1972)
  5. The Agricultural Crisis (1977)
  6. The Unsettling of America (1977)
  7. The Gift of Good Land (1981)
  8. Recollected Essays, 1965-1980 (1981)
  9. Standing by Words (1982)
  10. Preserving wildness (1986)
  11. Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer (1987)
  12. Home Economics (1987)
  13. From the Heartlands (1988)
  14. Harlan Hubbard (1990)
  15. What Are People For? (1990)
  16. Standing on Earth (1991)
  17. Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993)
  18. Another Turn of the Crank (1995)
  19. Life is a Miracle (2000)
  20. The Art of the Commonplace (2002)
  21. Citizenship Papers (2003)
  22. The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays (2005)
  23. Blessed are the Peacemakers (2005)
  24. Conversations with Wendell Berry (2007)
  25. Bringing it to the Table (2009)
  26. Imagination in Place (2010)
  27. What Matters? (2010)
  28. It All Turns on Affection (2012)
  29. Distant Neighbors: The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry & Gary Snyder (2014)
  30. Our Only World (2015)
  31. Roots to the Earth (2016)
  32. A Conversation Between Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson (2017)
  33. The Art of Loading Brush (2019)
  34. The World-Ending Fire (2019)
  35. The City and the Farm Crisis (2019)
  36. What I Stand On (2019)
  37. Wendell Berry: Essays 1969-1990 (2019)
  38. Essays, 1993-2017 (2019)
  39. Think Little (2019)

The O. Henry Prize Anthology Books In Publication Order

  1. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003 (By:,,Jennifer Egan,David Guterson) (2003)
  2. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2005 (By:,Richard Russo,Ann Patchett) (2005)
  3. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006 (By:Colm Tóibín,,Kevin Brockmeier) (2006)
  4. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007 (By:Ursula K. Le Guin,,,Lily Tuck) (2007)
  5. O. Henry Prize Stories 2008 (By:,,Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) (2008)
  6. The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009 (By:) (2009)
  7. PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2010 (By:) (2010)
  8. The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2011 (By:,,,Brian Evenson,,,,,,,,,,Lily Tuck) (2011)
  9. The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories: 2012 (With: Alice Munro,KevinWilson,,Anthony Doerr,,,,Lauren Groff) (2012)
  10. The PEN /O. Henry Prize Stories: 2012 (By:) (2012)
  11. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013 (By:Kelly Link,Alice Munro,,,,,,,Lily Tuck) (2013)
  12. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2014 (By:) (2013)
  13. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015 (By:) (2015)
  14. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016 (With: Ottessa Moshfegh,,,Diane Cook,,,,LydiaFitzpatrick,,,,,,,Shruti Swamy) (2016)
  15. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2017 (By:) (2017)
  16. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018 (By:) (2018)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories: 2012 (2012)

Port William Book Covers

Port William Membership Book Covers

New Patriotism Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

The O. Henry Prize Anthology Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Wendell Berry Books Overview

Nathan Coulter

This, the first title in the Port William series, introduces the rural section of Kentucky with which novelist Wendell Berry has had a lifelong fascination. When young Nathan loses his grandfather, Berry guides readers through the process of Nathan’s grief, endearing the reader to the simple humanity through which Nathan views the world. Echoing Berry’s own strongly held beliefs, Nathan tells us that his grandfather’s life ‘couldn’t be divided from the days he’d spent at work in his fields.’ Berry has long been compared to Faulkner for his ability to erect entire communities in his fiction, and his heart and soul have always lived in Port William, Kentucky. In this eloquent novel about duty, community, and a sweeping love of the land, Berry gives readers a classic book that takes them to that storied place.

The Wild Birds

Now in paperback for the first time, Berry’s popular collection of six interconnected stories traces his Port William characters through the Depression up to the 1950s.

Remembering

Wendell Berry’s continued fascination with the power of memory continues in this treasured novel set in 1976. Andy Catlett, a farmer whose hand was lost in an accident only eight months prior, wanders the streets of San Francisco. As his perspective filters through his anger over his loss and the harsh city that surrounds him, Andy begins to remember: the people and places that wait 2,000 miles away in his Kentucky home, the comfort he knew as a farmer, and his symbiotic relationship to the soil. Andy laments the modern shift away from the love of the land, even as he begins to accept his own changed relationship to the world.

A World Lost

Andy Catlett is nine years old when his Uncle Andrew is murdered. Still haunted by the death as an adult, Andy works to gather details of the tragedy from the fragile memories of family, neighbors, and friends. This beautiful, bittersweet novel was featured by Booklist , Library Journal , and the Louisville Courier Journal as one of the best books of 1996. It is the summer of 1944, and nine year old Andy Catlett is engrossed in the wide easy countryside near Port William, Kentuckythe clear, cool water of Chathan Spring, fields full of tumblebugs and meadowlarks, and a sky so huge it seems a great gape of vision. But sadness, loss, and mystery invade Andys world on a hot July afternoon when his Uncle Andrew is murdered. No one tells the boy why his uncle and namesake was killed, and the question follows him into manhood. As the adult Andy revisits family history to gather fragments of truth about his uncle and the murder, he begins to understand the limits of fact, namely that the truth about us, though it must lie all around us every day, is mostly hidden from us, like birds nests in the woods.

Two More Stories of the Port William Membership

Fiction. Two stories of rural life from the author of WATCH WITH ME and FIDELITY, newly available in paperback from Gnomon. As a celebrator of the land and the turning of the seasons that govern us still, Wendell Berry is, indeed, our writer for all seasons Wade Hall, Lexington Herald Leader. Wallace Stegner writes, It’s hard to say whether I like Berry better as a poet, an essayist, or a novelist. He is all three, at a high level.

Jayber Crow

The life story of Jayber Crow, barber, of the Port William Membership, as written by himself. Jayber Crow, born in Goforth, Kentucky, orphaned at age ten, began his search as a ‘pre ministerial student’ at Pigeonville College. There, freedom met with new burdens and a young man needed more than a mirror to find himsself. But the beginning of that finding was a short conversation with his profound professor of New Testament Greek: ‘You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers.’ After the flood of 1937, Jayber becomes the barber of the small community of Port William, Kentucky. From behind the barber chair he lives out the questions that drove him from seminary and begins to accept the gifts of community that enclose his answers.

That Distant Land

That Distant Land includes twenty three stories from Wendell Berry’s Port William membership arranged in their fictional chronology. The book shines forth as a single sustained work, not simply an anthology. It reveals Wendell Berry as a literary master capable of imaginative integrity over decades of writing with a multitude of characters followed over several generations. Combining The Wild Birds 1985, Fidelity 1992, and Watch With Me 1994, and including four never before collected stories and a map and geneaology of Port William, this book offers rest for the weary, hope for the beleaguered, and strength for the rest of us.

Hannah Coulter

‘Ignorant boys, killing each other,’ is just about all Nathan Coulter would tell his wife about the Battle of Okinawa in November 1945. Life continued as some boys returned from the war while the lives of others were mourned. Nathan’s wife, Hannah, has time now to tell of the years since the war. In her eighties, twice widowed and alone, Hannah shares her memories: of her childhood, of young love and loss, of raising children and the changing seasons. She turns her plain gaze to a community facing its own deterioration, where, she says, ‘We feel the old fabric torn, pulling apart, and we know how much we have loved each other.’ Hannah offers her summation: her stories and her gratitude for membership in Port William. We see her whole life as part of the great continuum of love and memory, grief and strength. Hannah Coulter is the latest installment in Wendell Berry s long story about the citizens of Port William, Kentucky. In his unforgettable prose, we learn of the Coulters children, of the Feltners and Branches, and how survivors ‘live right on.’

Andy Catlett

Berry opens this latest installment of the Port William series with young Andy Catlett preparing to visit a place he’d been to many times before, though this would be an adventure he will take very seriously. Nine years old, Andy embarks on the trip by bus, alone for the first time. He decides it will be a rite of passage and his first step into manhood. Sometimes a handful at home, Andy was a good boy when visiting his Grandparents’ houses, and he looked forward to the little spoiling certain to come his way. Set during the Christmas of 1943, young Andy’s experiences on this solitary voyage become pivot points of the entire epic of Port William. The old ways are in retreat, modern life is crowding everything in its path, and as Andy looks back many years later, he hears the stories again of his neighbors and friends. A beautiful short novel, this book is a perfect introduction into the whole world of Port William and will be a new chapter for those already familiar with this rich unfolding story.

A Place on Earth

In A Place on Earth the central character is not a person but a place: Port William, Kentucky, and the farmlands and forests that surround it, and the Kentucky River that runs nearby. This is a region that Mr. Berry knows intimately, both with heart and mind, a region whose faults and virtues he has spent a lifetime studying. In this novel he reveals the deep marriage between the land and its people; as a key figure in the story, the farmer Mat Feltner, puts it, ‘The earth is the genius of our life. The final questions and answers lie serenely coupled in it.’ So the rhythms of the novel are the rhythms of the land. The novel resonates with variations played on themes of change; looping transitions from war into peace, winter into spring, browning flood destruction into greening fields, absence into presence, lost into found. The style of the writing is exquisitely adapted to this varying subject, ranging from lyrical, reflective passages to ribald and rollicking farce but it is unified throughout by Wendell Berry’s acute perception and delicate sensibility.

The Memory of Old Jack

A burnished day in September 1952 provides the framework for a narrative that movingly distills the lifetime of an uncommonly admirable if very human being. A new corrected edition. ‘The Memory of Old Jack is a slab of rich Americana, eloquent testimony that it’s not a tragedy when a man dies at the end of his life.” The New York Times Book Review ‘The account of Jack’s courtship of his wife is a beautiful piece of writing…
and worthy of a place among the best pieces of prose written by American writers of this century.’ Library Journal

In the Presence of Fear

In these three poignant essays, prolific author Wendell Berry reflects deeply on the current sources of world hope and despair. Thoughts In the Presence of Fear, written in response to the September 11 attacks, has since been reprinted in 73 countries and seven languages. The three essays provide a much needed road map to a full cultural recovery.

Whitefoot

Whitefoot is a mouse, a small creature with ‘elegant whiskers’ and a ‘reddish brindly tan’ coat. She lives at the edge of the woods, where she knows, without a doubt, that she exists at the center of the world. What she doesn t know is that not far from her safe haven there is a river, and a world of such size and magnitude that she cannot even imagine it. One day, a burst of rain floods down on Whitefoot, lifting her in its currents and carrying her far from home. What happens next leads Whitefoot on a great adventure one in which she must encounter new experiences and challenges to her survival. The discovery of the universe around her, and her ability to survive within it, is a lesson that’s sure to resonate with children and adults alike. Written by best selling author, Wendell Berry, this beautiful volume is illustrated in fine detail with original drawings by acclaimed artist Davis Te Selle.

The Collected Poems, 1957-1982

This rich volume reflects the development of Berrys poetic sensibility.. The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry gathers one hundred poems written between 1957 and 1996. Chosen by the author, these pieces have been selected from each of nine previously published collections. The rich work in this volume reflects the development of Berrys poetic sensibility over four decades. Focusing on themes that have occupied his work for years land and nature, family and community, tradition as the groundwork for life and culture The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry celebrates the broad range of this vital and transforming poet. In elegy, subversive call, song, or meditation, Wendell Berrys clear yet complex vision of what it means to be human is rare in American poetry. In these one hundred poems, drawn from nine previous collections, Berrys play of sound and syntax moves in our minds like something just remembered, and remains with us like an afterimage on the eye. He loves the pleasure of daily work outdoors, and his love of family and community is centered in a place on earth. As an activist and farmer, Berrys poems are balanced by reverence. With care and fidelity, Berrys recurring themes luminesce into examples of faith, fortitude, and action. In these scattershot days of spins and polls, E mails and answering machines, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry is a contemplative and inspiring hymn to life.

Fidelity

‘Berry richly evokes Port William’s farmlands and hamlets, and his characters are fiercely individual, yet mutually protective in everything they do…
. His sentences are exquisitely constructed, suggesting the cyclic rhythms of his agrarian world.’ New York Times Book Review.

Entries

Berry’s remarkable new collection, produced over the past decade, offers poems of remembrance and regeneration, celebrating life’s complexities from the domestic to the eternal.

A Timbered Choir

For more than two decades, Wendell Berry has spent his Sunday mornings in a kind of walking meditation, observing the world and writing poems. A small collection of Berrys Sabbath poems were published in 1987, but A Timbered Choir gathers all of these singular pieces to date.. Berrys Sabbath poems embrace much that is elemental to human life beauty, death, peace, and hope. In his preface to the collection, Berry writes about the growing audience for public poetry readings. While he sees poetry in the public eye as a good thing, Berry asks us to recognize the private life of the poem. These Sabbath poems were written in silence, in solitude, and mainly out of doors, and tell us about moments when heart and mind are open and aware. Many years of writing have won Wendell Berry the affection of a broad public. He is beloved for his quiet, steady explorations of nature, his emphasis on finding good work to do in the world, and his faith in the solace of family, memory, and community. His poetry is assured and unceasingly spiritual; its power lies in the strength of the truths revealed. For more than two decades, Wendell Berry has spent his Sunday mornings in a kind of walking meditation, observing the world and writing poems. A small collection of Berrys Sabbath poems was published in 1987, but A Timbered Choir gathers all of these singular poems written to date. In his preface, Berry tells us that his Sabbath poems were written in silence, in solitude, mainly out of doors, and his hope is that readers will read them as they were written: slowly, and with more patience than effort. This wish proves unusually rewarding, for Berrys voice is quiet, meditative, and wholehearted. He reminds us that there is a quietness which allows us to pay closer attention to the world and our place in it. Berrys evocation of the natural world shows us time and again the exquisite beauty of the commonplace. He writes of walking away from his home, turning, and seeing the landscape transformed by spring: In its time and great patience/ beauty had come upon us/ greater than I had imagined. He writes, also, of dark revelations; the day, for example, when his granddaughters visit the Holocaust Museum: Now, you know the worst/ we humans have to know/ about ourselves, and I am sorry. Berrys Sabbath poems embrace much that is elemental to human life beauty, death, peace, and hope. Many years of writing have won Wendell Berry the affection of a broad public. He is beloved for his quiet, steady explorations of nature, his emphasis on finding good work to do in the world, and his faith in the solace of family, memory, and community. His poetry is always poised and unceasingly spiritual; its power lies in the strength of the truths revealed.

Given

For five decades Wendell Berry has been a poet of great clarity and purpose. He is an award winning writer whose imagination is grounded by the pastures of his chosen place and the rooms and porches of his family’s home. In Given his first collection of new poems in ten years now in paperback the work is as rich and varied as ever before. With his unmistakable voice as the constant, he dexterously maneuvers through a variety of forms and themes political cautions, love poems, a play in verse, and a long series of Sabbath Poems that resulted from Berry’s recent Sunday morning walks of meditation and observation. Berry’s work is one of devotion to family and community, to the earth and her creatures, to the memories of the past, and the hope of the future. His writing stands alongside the work of William Carlos Williams and Robert Frost as a rigorous American testament.

Window Poems

Since 1979, Wendell Berry has taken a walk almost every Sunday. Often on these walks of meditation and reflection, he finds himself making notes for poems. Some years he has accomplished as many as fifteen or twenty poems from those walks, while in other years only half a dozen. The resultant work has been published in collections of Sabbath Poems, a precursor to which was The Window Poems. The Window Poems were composed while Berry looked out of the multi paned window of his writing studio, The Long Legged House. The house is near the renovated farmhouse where Berry and his wife raised their children and continue to live. These poems contemplate Berry’s personal life as much as they ponder the seasons he witnesses through the window. This beautiful book was first designed, composed, and printed on a Washington handpress by Bob Barris, at the Press on Scroll Road, with wood engravings by Wesley Bates. Including an introduction by James Baker Hall, this early sequence of poems signals and celebrates the groundwork of Berry’s life.

The Mad Farmer

During the otherwise quiet course of his life as a poet, Wendell Berry has become mad at what contemporary society has made of its land, its communities, and its past. This anger reaches its peak in the poems of The Mad Farmer, an open ended sequence he’s found himself impelled to continue against his better instincts. These poems can take the shape of manifestos, meditations, insults, Whitmanic fits and ravings and are often funny in spite of themselves. The Mad Farmer is a character as necessary, perhaps, as he is regrettable. Here are gathered the individual poems from Berry s various collections to offer the teachings and bit*cheries of this amazing American voice. After the great success of the lovely Window Poems, Bob Baris of the Press on Scroll Road returns to design and produce an edition illustrated with etchings by Abigail Rover. James Baker Hall and William Kloefkorn offer poems here that also show how The Mad Farmer has escaped into the work of others. The whole is a wonderful testimony to the power of anger and humor to bring even the most terrible consequences into a focus otherwise impossible to obtain.

Leavings

No one writes like Wendell Berry. Whether essay, novel, story, or poem, his inimitable voice rings true, as natural as the land he has farmed in Kentucky for over 40 years.

Following the widely praised Given, this new collection offers a masterful blend of epigrams, elegies, lyrics, and letters, with the occasional short love poem. Alternately amused, outraged, and resigned, Berry’s welcome voice is the constant in this varied mix. The book concludes with a new sequence of Sabbath poems, works that have spawned from Berry s Sunday morning walks of meditation and observation.

Berry s themes are reflections of his life: friends, family, the farm, the nature around us as well as within. He speaks strongly for himself and sometimes for the lost heart of the country. As he has borne witness to the world for eight decades, what he offers us now in this new collection of poems is of incomparable value.

The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford

Acclaimed essayist and poet Wendell Berry was born and has always lived in a provincial part of the country without an established literary culture. In an effort to adapt his poetry to his place of Henry County, Kentucky, Berry discovered an enduringly useful example in the work of William Carlos Williams. In Williams commitment to his place of Rutherford, New Jersey, Berry found an inspiration that inevitably influenced the direction of his own writing. Both men would go on to establish themselves as respected American poets, and here Berry sets forth his understanding of that evolution for Williams, who in the course of his local membership and service, became a poet indispensable to us all.

The Long-Legged House

First published in 1969 and out of print for more than twenty five years, The Long Legged House was award winner Wendell Berry’s first collection of essays, the inaugural work introducing many of the central issues that have occupied him over the course of his career. Three essays at the heart of this volume The Rise, The Long Legged House, and A Native Hill are essays of homecoming and memoir, as the writer finds his home place, his native ground, his place on earth. As he later wrote, What I stand for is what I stand on, and here we see him beginning the acts of rediscovery and resettling. This volume contains original contents, with only slight revisions as might be desired. It gives readers the opportunity to read the work of this remarkable cultural critic and agrarian, and to delight in the prose of one of America s greatest stylists.

The Hidden Wound

With the expected grace of Wendell Berry comes The Hidden Wound, an essay about racism and the damage it has done to the identity of our country. Through Berry’s personal experience, he explains how remaining passive in the face of the struggle of racism further corrodes America s potential. In a quiet and observant manner, Berry opens up about how his attempt to discuss racism is rooted in the hope that someday the historical wound will begin to heal.

The Unforeseen Wilderness

Only someone who values land enough to farm a hillside for more than thirty years could write about a wild place so lovingly. Wendell Berry just as easily steps into Kentucky’s Red River Gorge and makes the observations of a poet as he does step away to view his subject with the keen, unflinching eye of an essayist. The inimitable voice of Wendell Berry at once frank and lovely is our guide as we explore this unique wilderness.

Located in eastern Kentucky and home to 26,000 acres of untamed river, rock formations, historical sites, unusual vegetation and wildlife, the Gorge very nearly fell victim to a man made lake thirty years ago. ‘No place is to be learned like a textbook,’ Berry tells us, and so through revealing the Gorge s corners and crevices, its ridges and rapids, his words not only implore us to know more but to venture there ourselves. Infused with his very personal perspective and enhanced by the startling photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, The Unforeseen Wilderness draws the reader in to celebrate an extraordinary natural beauty and to better understand what threatens it.

A Continuous Harmony

Award winner Wendell Berry’s second collection of essays was first published in 1972, and contained eight essays, including the seminal ‘Think Little,’ which was printed in The Last Whole Earth Catalogue and reprinted around the globe. The splendid centerpiece of A Continuous Harmony, ‘Discipline and Hope,’ is an insightful and articulate essay of instruction and caution. This volume contains original content, with only slight revisions as might be desired. It gives readers the opportunity to read the work of this remarkable cultural critic and agrarian, and to delight in the prose of one of America’s greatest stylists.

The Unsettling of America

Since its publication by Sierra Club Books 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. Today’s agribusiness, however, takes farming out of its cultural context and away from families. As a result, we as a nation are more estranged from the land from the intimate knowledge, love, and care of it. Sadly, as Berry notes in his Afterword to this third edition, his arguments and observations are more relevant than ever. We continue to suffer loss of community, the devaluation of human work, and the destruction of nature under an economic system dedicated to the mechanistic pursuit of products and profits. Although this book has not had the happy fate of being proved wrong, Berry writes, there are good people working to make something comely and enduring of our life on this earth. Wendell Berry is one of those people, writing and working, as ever, with passion, eloquence, and conviction.

The Gift of Good Land

The essays in The Gift of Good Land are as true today as when they were first published in 1981; the problems addressed here are still with us and the solutions no nearer to hand. One of the insistent themes of this book is the interdependence, the wholeness, the oneness of people, the land, weather, animals, and family. To touch one is to tamper with them all. We live in one functioning organism whose separate parts are artificially isolated by our culture.

The twenty four essays in this collection cover a variety of subjects; the author’s journeys to the Peruvian Andes, to the desert of southern Arizona, and to Amish country to study the evolution of ancient native agricultural practices. In Solving for Pattern, Mr. Berry lists fourteen critical standards for solving agricultural problems that can just as easily be used as standards for solving personal and family problems. In the title essay, the author examines our Judeo Christian heritage to discover parallels with the Buddhist doctrine of right livelihood or right occupation. He develops the compelling argument that The Gift of Good Land has strings attached. We have it only on loan and only for as long as we practice good stewardship.

Recollected Essays, 1965-1980

These eleven essays, selected by the author from five previous collections, provide us with a single volume tracing Mr. Berry’s desire ‘to make myself responsibly at home in this world and in my native and chosen place.’ Essays are drawn from The Long Legged House, The Hidden Wound, The Unforeseen Wilderness, A Continuous Harmony, and The Unsettling of America. A new essay, ‘The Making of a Marginal Farm,’ forms the coda, unifying ‘what I value most in the world: the life and health of the earth, the peacefulness of human communities and households.’

Standing by Words

In these six essays, award winning author Wendell Berry considers the degeneration of language that is manifest throughout our culture, from poetry to politics, from conversation to advertising, and he shows how the ever widening cleft between words and their referents mirrors the increasing isolation of individuals from their communities and of their communities from the land. From the essay, Standing by Words, Berry writes, Two epidemic illnesses of our time upon both of which virtual industries of cures have been founded are the disintegration of communities and the disintegration of persons. That these two are related that private loneliness, for example, will necessarily accompany public confusion is clear enough. What seems not so well understood, because not so much examined, is the relation between these disintegrations and the disintegration of language. My impression is that we have seen, for perhaps a hundred and fifty years, a gradual increase in language that is either meaningless or destructive of meaning. And I believe that this increasing unreliability of language parallels the increasing disintegration, over the same period, of persons and communities. Out of print for more than fifteen years, Standing by Words offers a masterfully written argument for the literary tradition.

Home Economics

My work has been motivated, Wendell Berry has written, by a desire to make myself responsibly at home in this world and in my native and chosen place. In Home Economics, a collection of fourteen essays, Berry explores this process and continues to discuss what it means to make oneself responsibly at home.

His title reminds us that the very root of economics is stewardship, household management. To paraphrase Confucius, a healthy planet is made up of healthy nations that are simply healthy communities sharing common ground, and communities are gatherings of households. A measure of the health of the planet is economics the health of its households. Any process of destruction or healing must begin at home. Berry speaks of the necessary coherence of the Great Economy, as he argues for clarity in our lives, our conceptions, and our communications. To live is not to pass time, but to spend time.

Whether as critic or as champion, Wendell Berry offers careful insights into our personal and national situation in a prose that is ringing and clear.

Harlan Hubbard

‘Includes 20 color plates of Hubbard’s own paintings, along with several photographs of Anna and Harlan Hubbard. Wendell Berry is also the author of Tobacco Harvest: An Elegy. See other books in the series Blazer Lectures.

What Are People For?

Wendell Berry identifies himself as both a farmer of sorts and an artist of sorts, which he deftly illustrates in the scope of these 22 essays. Ranging from America’s insatiable consumerism and household economies to literary subjects and America s attitude toward waste, Berry gracefully navigates from one topic to the next. He speaks candidly about the ills plaguing America and the growing gap between people and the land. Despite the somber nature of these essays, Berry s voice and prose provide an underlying sense of faith and hope. He frames his reflections with poetic responsibility, standing up as a firm believer in the power of the human race not only to fix its past mistakes but to build a future that will provide a better life for all.

Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community

The celebrated essayist and poet offers a collection of essays dealing with important social issues, stressing the importance of communities, the need for diversity in local economies, and the dangers of globalization.

Another Turn of the Crank

Wendell Berry proposes, and earnestly hopes, that people will learn once more to care for their local communities, and so begin a restoration that might spread over our entire nation and beyond. The renewed development of local economies would help preserve rural diversity despite the burgeoning global economy that threatens to homogenize and compromise communities all over the world. From modern health care to the practice of forestry, from local focus to national resolve, Berry argues, there can never be a separation between global ecosystems and human communities the two are intricately connected, and the health and survival of one depends upon the other. Provocative, intimate, and thoughtful, Another Turn of the Crank reaches to the heart of Berry’s concern and vision for the future, for America and for the world.

Life is a Miracle

One of America’s most respected and celebrated writers provides a thought provoking analysis of, and a concise rebuttal of, E. O. Wilson’s Consilience. ‘ A scathing as*sessmentBerry shows that Wilson’s much celebrated, controversial pleas in Consilience to unify all branches of knowledge is nothing more than a fatuous subordination of religion, art, and everything else that is good to scienceBerry is one of the most perceptive critics of American society writing today. ‘ Lauren F. Winner, Washington Post Book World’I am tempted to say he understands Consilience better than Wilson himselfA new emancipation proclamation in which he speaks again and again about how to defy the tyranny of scientific materialism. ‘ Colin C. Campbell, Christian Science Monitor’Berry takes a wrecking ball to E. O. Wilson’s Consilience, reducing its smug assumptions regarding the fusion of science, art, and religion to so much rubble. ‘ Kirkus ReviewsIn Life is a Miracle, the devotion of science to the quantitative and reductionist world is measured against the mysterious, qualitative suggestions of religion and art. Berry sees life as the collision of these separate forces, but without all three in the mix we are left at sea in the world.

The Art of the Commonplace

Collected here for the first time, the essential essays from Wendell Berry’s writings on agrarianism, agriculture, and community. Together these twenty one essays offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture. Grouped around five themes geobiography, an agrarian critique of culture, agrarian fundamentals, agrarian economics, and agrarian religion they provide an excellent introduction to the wide range of Wendell Berry’s work. They also demonstrate that Berry’s writing promotes a clearly defined agrarian vision compelling to those dissatisfied with the stress, anxiety, ill health, and destructiveness of media driven culture. Readers will find in these essays illuminating discussions on questions such as: Why is agriculture becoming culturally irrelevant, and at what cost? What are the forces of social disintegration, and how might they be reversed? How might men and women live together in ways that are to the benefit of both? And how does the corporate takeover of social institutions and economic practices contribute to the destruction of human and natural environments? Whether it be through his staunch support of local economies, his defense of farming communities, or his call for family integrity, Berry emerges as the champion of responsibilities and priorities that serve the health, vitality, and happiness of the whole community of creation.

Citizenship Papers

There are those in America today who seem to feel we must audition for our citizenship, with Patriot offered as the badge for those found narrowly worthy. Let this book stand as Wendell Berry’s application, for he is one of those faithful, devoted critics envisioned by the Founding Fathers to be the life s blood and very future of the nation they imagined. Adams, Jefferson, and Madison would have found great clarity in his prose and great hope in his vision. And today s readers will be moved and encouraged by his anger and his refusal to surrender in the face of desperate odds. Books get written for all sorts of reasons, and this book was written out of necessity. Citizenship Papers collects twenty new essays, from celebrations of exemplary lives to critiques of the American experience, including A Citizen s Response to the new National Security Strategy a ringing call of alarm to a nation standing on the brink of global catastrophe.

The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays

In a democratic commonwealth, what are the costs and consequences of rugged individualism? What, in the fullest sense, is involved in our National Security? When considering Weapons of Mass Destruction, does our inventory include soil loss, climate change, and ground water poisoning? And should we add Economic Weapons of Mass Destruction to our list of targets? Whose freedom are we considering when we speak of the ‘free market’ or ‘free enterprise’? What is the price of ownership without affection?These and several other questions lie at the heart of Wendell Berry’s latest collection of essays, writing ‘motivated by fear of our violence to one another and to the world, and my hope that we might do better.’ Setting aside abstraction in favor of clarity, coherence, and passion, this new book provides a setting of immediate danger and profound hope. The core of this collection ‘Imagination in Place,’ ‘The Way of Ignorance,’ ‘Quantity and Form,’ ‘The Purpose of a Coherent Community,’ ‘Compromise, Hell!’ consists of some of the finest essays of Wendell Berry’s long career, and the whole offers an exhilarating sense of purpose and a clear call to action.

Blessed are the Peacemakers

For two thousand years, artists, social and cultural activists, politicians and philosophers, humanists and devoted spiritual seekers have all looked to the sayings of Jesus for inspiration and instruction. Unfortunately, on occasions too frequent and destructive to enumerate, the teachings of Christ have been either ignored or distorted by the very people calling themselves Christian. Today, we see a vigorous movement in America fueled by a politicized and engaged portion of the electorate involved in just such ignorance and distortion. Whether directed towards social intolerance or attitudes of warlike aggression, these right wing citizens have claimed a power of influence that far exceeds their numbers. This small book collects the sayings of Jesus, selected by Mr. Berry, who has contributed an essay of introduction. Here is a way of peace as described and directed by the greatest spiritual teacher in the West. This is a book of inspiration and prayerful compassion, and we may hope a ringing call to action at a time when our country and the world it once led stand at a dangerous crossroads.

Conversations with Wendell Berry

Since 1960, Wendell Berry b. 1934 has produced one of the most substantial and consistently thematic bodies of work of any modern American writer. In more than fifty books in various genres novels, short stories, poems, and essays he has celebrated a life lived in close communion with neighbors and the earth and has addressed many of our most urgent cultural maladies. His collections of essays urge us to think and act responsibly as members of a community both human and natural. Volumes of his poems seek to wed us to nature and realign our vision with its mysteries. His growing Port William cycle of novels offers us a fictional model for understanding, for compassion, and for living in constant regard for others. Conversations with Wendell Berry gathers for the first time interviews with the writer, ranging from 1973 to 2006, including one never before published. For readers acquainted with Berry’s work, this volume offers insights available nowhere else. It reveals succinctly the main currents of his life’s work. What emerges is a citizen writer profoundly affected by cultural crises at home and in the world. Morris Allen Grubbs directs the Preparing Future Faculty Program in the graduate school at University of Kentucky, where he was a student of Berry’s. He is editor of Home and Beyond: An Anthology of Kentucky Short Stories.

Bringing it to the Table

Only a farmer could delve so deeply into the origins of food, and only a writer of Wendell Berry’s caliber could convey it with such conviction and eloquence. Long before Whole Foods organic produce was available at your local supermarket, Berry was farming with the purity of food in mind. For the last five decades, Berry has embodied mindful eating through his land practices and his writing. In recognition of that influence, Michael Pollan here offers an introduction to this wonderful collection. Drawn from over thirty years of work, this collection joins bestsellers The Omnivore s Dilemma, by Pollan, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, as essential reading for anyone who cares about what they eat. The essays address such concerns as: How does organic measure up against locally grown? What are the differences between small and large farms, and how does that affect what you put on your dinner table? What can you do to support sustainable agriculture?A progenitor of the Slow Food movement, Wendell Berry reminds us all to take the time to understand the basics of what we ingest. Eating is an agriculture act, he writes. Indeed, we are all players in the food economy.

Imagination in Place

‘Our cultural tradition is in large part the record of our continuing effort to understand ourselves as beings specifically human.’ Wendell Berry
In this varied and vibrant collection of new writings, Wendell Berry covers a wide landscape of interests relevant to us all, ranging from the public policy to nature and spirituality. He shares his inimitable perspective on matters that affect each of us on personal and public levels indeed, this collection confirms what Berry readers have long known: Few writers in America can match the depth of his thought or the ringing clarity of his prose. Imagination in Place brings to date Berry’s perspective on such essential current concerns as agriculture, sustainability, and the economy. He addresses the latter with his much admired essay ‘Faustian Economics,’ previously published in The Atlantic and included here an especially prescient commentary given our country’s current challenges with Late Capitalism. There are also beautiful essays of tribute, wherein Berry offers insights into the lives and works of such luminaries as Wallace Stegner, James Still, Gary Snyder, and Kathleen Raine. Altogether, readers familiar with Wendell Berry’s work and those new to his thought will find the essays here to be full of extraordinary power and hope.

What Matters?

Over the years, Wendell Berry has sought to understand and confront the financial structure of modern society and the impact of developing late capitalism on American culture. There is perhaps no more demanding or important critique available to contemporary citizens than Berry’s writings just as there is no vocabulary more given to obfuscation than that of economics as practiced by professionals and academics. Berry has called upon us to return to the basics. He has traced how the clarity of our economic approach has eroded over time, as the financial asylum was overtaken by the inmates, and citizens were turned from consumers entertained and distracted to victims, threatened by a future of despair and disillusion. For this collection, Berry offers essays from over the last 25 years, alongside new essays about the recent economic collapse, including Money Versus Goods and Faustian Economics, treatises of great alarm and courage. He offers advice and perspective that should be heeded by all concerned as our society attempts to steer from its present chaos and recession to a future of hope and opportunity. With urgency and clarity, Berry asks us to look toward a true sustainable commonwealth, grounded in realistic Jeffersonian principles applied to our present day.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003 (By:,,Jennifer Egan,David Guterson)

Since its establishment in 1919, the O. Henry Prize stories collection has offered an exciting selection of the best stories published in hundreds of literary magazines every year. Such classic works of American literature as Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers 1927; William Faulkner s Barn Burning 1939; Carson McCuller s A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud 1943; Shirley Jackson s The Lottery 1949; J.D. Salinger s For Esme with Love and Squalor 1963; John Cheever s The Country Husband 1956 ; and Flannery O Conner s Everything that Rises Must Converge 1963 all were O. Henry Prize stories.

An accomplished new series editor novelist and short story writer Laura Furman has read more than a thousand stories to identify the 20 winners, each one a pleasure to read today, each one a potential classic. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003 also contains brief essays from each of the three distinguished judges on their favorite story, and comments from the prize winning writers on what inspired their stories. There is nothing like the ever rich, surprising, and original O. Henry collection for enjoying the contemporary short story.

The Thing in the Forest A. S. Byatt
The Shell Collector Anthony Doerr
Burn Your Maps Robyn Jay Leff
Lush Bradford Morrow
God s Goodness Marjorie Kemper
Bleed Blue in Indonesia Adam Desnoyers
The Story Edith Pearlman
Swept Away T. Coraghessan Boyle
Meanwhile Ann Harleman
Three Days. A Month. More. Douglas Light
The High Road Joan Silber
Election Eve Evan S. Connell
Irish Girl Tim Johnston
What Went Wrong Tim O Brien
The American Embassy Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Kissing William Kittredge
Sacred Statues William Trevor
Two Words Molly Giles
Fathers Alice Munro
Train Dreams Denis Johnson

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2005 (By:,Richard Russo,Ann Patchett)

Mudlavia
Elizabeth Stuckey French

The Brief History of the Dead
Kevin Brockmeier

The Golden Era of Heartbreak
Michael Parker

The Hurt Man
Wendell Berry

The Tutor
Nell Freudenberger

Fantasy for Eleven Fingers
Ben Fountain

The High Divide
Charles D Ambrosio

Desolation
Gail Jones

A Rich Man
Edward P. Jones

Dues
Dale Peck

Speckle Trout
Ron Rash

Sphinxes
Timothy Crouse

Grace
Paula Fox

Snowbound
Liza Ward

Tea
Nancy Reisman

Christie
Caitlin Macy

Refuge in London
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

The Drowned Woman
Frances De Pontes Peebles

The Card Trick
Tessa Hadley

What You Pawn I Will Redeem
Sherman Alexie

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006 (By:Colm Tóibín,,Kevin Brockmeier)

A radiant reflection of contemporary fiction at its best, The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006 features stories from locales as diverse as Russia, Zimbabwe, and the rural American South. Series editor Laura Furman considered thousands of stories in hundreds of literary magazines before selecting the winners, which are accompanied here by short essays from each of the three eminent jurors on his or her favorite story, as well as observations from all twenty prize winners on what inspired them. Ranging in tone from arch humor to self deluding obsessiveness to fairy tale ingenuousness, these stories are a treasury of potential classics.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007 (By:Ursula K. Le Guin,,,Lily Tuck)

An arresting collection of contemporary fiction at its best, these stories explore a vast range of subjects, from love and deception to war and the insidious power of class distinctions. However clearly spoken, in voices sophisticated, cunning, or na ve, here is fiction that consistently defies our expectations. Selected from thousands of stories in hundreds of literary magazines, the twenty prize winning stories are accompanied by essays from each of the three eminent jurors on which stories they judged the best, and observations from all twenty prizewinners on what inspired them.

The Room
William Trevor

The Scent of Cinnamon
Charles Lambert

Cherubs
Justine Dymond

Galveston Bay, 1826
Eddie Chuculate

The Gift of Years
Vu Tran

The Diarist
Richard McCann

War Buddies
Joan Silber

Djamilla
Tony D Souza

In a Bear’s Eye
Yannick Murphy

Summer, with Twins
Rebecca Curtis

Mudder Tongue
Brian Evenson

Companion
Sana Krasikov

A Stone House
Bay Anapol

The Company of Men
Jan Ellison

City Visit
Adam Haslett

The Duchess of Albany
Christine Schutt

A New Kind of Gravity
Andrew Foster Altschul

Gringos
Ariel Dorfman

El Ojo de Agua
Susan Straight

The View from Castle Rock
Alice Munro

O. Henry Prize Stories 2008 (By:,,Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

An annual collection of the twenty best contemporary short stories selected by series editor Laura Furman from hundreds of literary magazines, The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008 is studded with extraordinary settings and characters: a teenager in survivalist Alaska, the seed keeper of a doomed Chinese village, a young woman trying to save her life in a Ukrainian internet caf . Also included are the winning writers’ comments on what inspired them, a short essay from each of the three eminent jurors, and an extensive resource list of literary magazines.

The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009 (By:)

A collection of the twenty best contemporary short stories selected by series editor Laura Furman from hundreds of literary magazines, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009 features unforgettable tales in settings as diverse as post war Vietnam, a luxurious seaside development in Cape Town, an Egyptian desert village, and a permanently darkened New York City. Also included are essays from the eminent jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winners on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines.

PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2010 (By:)

A collection of the twenty best contemporary short stories selected by series editor Laura Furman from hundreds of literary magazines, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2010 brings to life a dazzling array of subjects: a street orphan in Malaysia, a cowboy and his teenage bride, a Russian nanny in Manhattan, a nineteenth century Nigerian widow, and political prisoners on a Greek island. Also included are essays from the eminent jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winners on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines. Them Old Cowboy Songs Annie Proulx Clothed, Female FigureKirstin Allio The Headstrong Historian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Stand By Me Wendell Berry Sheep May Safely GrazeJess Row Birch Memorial Preeta Samarasan VisitationBrad Watson The Woman of the House William Trevor The Bridge Daniel Alarc n A Spoiled ManDaniyal Mueenuddin Oh, DeathJames Lasdun Fresco, Byzantine Natalie Bakopoulos The End of My Life in New YorkPeter Cameron ObitTed Sanders The Lover Damon Galgut An East Egg Update George Bradley Into the GorgeRon Rash MicrostoriesJohn Edgar Wideman Some Women Alice Munro Making GoodLore Segal For author interviews, photos, and more, go to www. ohenryprizestories. com A portion of the proceeds from this book will go to support the PEN Readers & Writers Literary Outreach Program.

The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2011 (By:,,,Brian Evenson,,,,,,,,,,Lily Tuck)

The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2011 contains twenty unforgettable stories selected from hundreds of literary magazines. The winning tales take place in such far flung locales as Madagascar, Nantucket, a Midwestern meth lab, Antarctica, and a post apocalyptic England, and feature a fascinating array of characters: aging jazzmen, avalanche researchers, a South African wild child, and a mute actor in silent films. Also included are essays from the eminent jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winners on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines. Your Fate Hurtles Down at YouJim Shepard Diary of an Interesting YearHelen Simpson MelindaJudy Doenges NightbloomingKenneth Calhoun The Restoration of the Villa Where Tibor K lm n Once LivedTamas Dobozy IceLily Tuck How to Leave HialeahJennine Cap Crucet The JunctionDavid Means Pole, PoleSusan Minot Alamo PlazaBrad Watson The Black Square Chris Adrian Nothing of ConsequenceJane Delury The Rules Are the RulesAdam Foulds The Vanishing AmericanLeslie Parry CrossingMark Slouka Bed DeathLori Ostlund WindeyeBrian Evenson SunshineLynn Freed Never Come BackElizabeth Tallent Something You Can t Live WithoutMatthew Neill Null For author interviews, photos, and more, go to www. ohenryprizestories. com A portion of the proceeds from this book will go to support the PEN Readers & Writers Literary Outreach Program.

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