Download or read book The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry written by Mark Mitchell and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A striking contribution to the conversation that is conservatism Wendell Berry—poet, novelist, essayist, critic, farmer—has won the admiration of Americans from all walks of life and from across the political spectrum. His writings treat an extraordinary range of subjects, including politics, economics, ecology, farming, work, marriage, religion, and education. But as this enlightening new book shows, such diverse writings are united by a humane vision that finds its inspiration in the great moral and literary tradition of the West. In The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry, Mark T. Mitchell and Nathan Schlueter bring together a distinguished roster of writers to critically engage Berry’s ideas. The volume features original contributions from Rod Dreher, Anthony Esolen, Allan Carlson, Richard Gamble, Jason Peters, Anne Husted Burleigh, Patrick J. Deneen, Caleb Stegall, Luke Schlueter, Matt Bonzo, Michael Stevens, D. G. Hart, Mark Shiffman, and William Edmund Fahey, as well as a classic piece by Wallace Stegner. Together, these authors situation Berry’s ideas within the larger context of conservative thought. His vision stands for reality in all its facets and against all reductive “isms”—for intellect against intellectualism, individuality against individualism, community against communitarianism, liberty against libertarianism. Wendell Berry calls his readers to live lives of gratitude, responsibility, friendship, and love—notions that, as this important new book makes clear, should be at the heart of a thoughtful and coherent conservatism.
Download or read book Jayber Crow written by Wendell Berry and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2001-08-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is a book about Heaven,” says Jayber Crow, “but I must say too that . . . I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell.” It is 1932 and he has returned to his native Port William to become the town's barber. Orphaned at age ten, Jayber Crow’s acquaintance with loneliness and want have made him a patient observer of the human animal, in both its goodness and frailty. He 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 himself. But the beginning of that finding was a short conversation with “Old Grit,” his profound professor of New Testament Greek. “You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out—perhaps a little at a time.” “And how long is that going to take?” “I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.” “That could be a long time.” “I will tell you a further mystery,” he said. “It may take longer.” Wendell Berry’s clear–sighted depiction of humanity’s gifts—love and loss, joy and despair—is seen though his intimate knowledge of the Port William Membership.
Download or read book Wendell Berry written by Jay Davis and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sex Economy Freedom Community written by Wendell Berry and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""Read [him] with pencil in hand, make notes, and hope that somehow our country and the world will soon come to see the truth that is told here."" —The New York Times Book Review In this collection of essays, first published in 1993, Wendell Berry continues his work as one of America's most necessary social commentators. With wisdom and clear, ringing prose, he tackles head–on some of the most difficult problems confronting us near the end of the twentieth century—problems we still face today. Berry elucidates connections between sexual brutality and economic brutality, and the role of art and free speech. He forcefully addresses America's unabashed pursuit of self–liberation, which he says is ""still the strongest force now operating in our society."" As individuals turn away from their community, they conform to a ""rootless and placeless monoculture of commercial expectations and products,"" buying into the very economic system that is destroying the earth, our communities, and all they represent.
Download or read book The Way of Ignorance written by Wendell Berry and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-05 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The continuing war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the political sniping engendered by the Supreme Court nominations, Terry Schiavo - contemporary American society is characterized by divisive anger, profound loss, and danger. Wendell Berry, one of the country's foremost cultural critics, addresses the menace, responding with hope and intelligence in a series of essays that tackle the major questions of the day. Whose freedom are we considering when we speak of the ''free market'' or ''free enterprise?'' What is really involved in our National Security? What is the price of ownership without affection? Berry answers in prose that shuns abstraction for clarity, coherence, and passion, giving us essays that may be the finest of his long career.
Download or read book The Hidden Wound written by Wendell Berry and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2010-04-28 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An impassioned, thoughtful, and fearless essay on the effects of racism on the American identity by one of our country’s most humane literary voices. Acclaimed as “one of the most humane, honest, liberating works of our time” (The Village Voice), The Hidden Wound is a book-length 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 great 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. Pulitzer prize-winning author Larry McMurtry calls this “a profound, passionate, crucial piece of writing . . . Few readers, and I think, no writers will be able to read it without a small pulse of triumph at the temples: the strange, almost communal sense of triumph one feels when someone has written truly well . . . The statement it makes is intricate and beautiful, sad but strong.” “Mr. Berry is a sophisticated, philosophical poet in the line descending from Emerson and Thoreau." ―The Baltimore Sun "[Berry’s poems] shine with the gentle wisdom of a craftsman who has thought deeply about the paradoxical strangeness and wonder of life." ―The Christian Science Monitor "Wendell Berry is one of those rare individuals who speaks to us always of responsibility, of the individual cultivation of an active and aware participation in the arts of life." ―The Bloomsbury Review “[Berry’s] poems, novels and essays . . . are probably the most sustained contemporary articulation of America’s agrarian, Jeffersonian ideal.” ―Publishers Weekly
Download or read book The Long Legged House written by Wendell Berry and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1969 and out of print for more than twenty–five years, The Long–Legged House was 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.
Download or read book Wendell Berry and Higher Education written by Jack R. Baker and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the university should focus on community: “An enlightening interpretation of Wendell Berry’s philosophy for the pursuit of a holistic higher education.” —Publishers Weekly Prominent author and cultural critic Wendell Berry is well known for his contributions to agrarianism and environmentalism, but his commentary on education has received comparatively little attention. Yet Berry has been eloquently unmasking America’s cultural obsession with restless mobility for decades, arguing that it causes damage to both the land and the character of our communities. The education system, he maintains, plays a central role in this obsession, inculcating in students’ minds the American dream of moving up and moving on. Drawing on Berry’s essays, fiction, and poetry, Jack R. Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro illuminate the influential thinker’s vision for higher education in this path-breaking study. Each chapter begins with an examination of one of Berry’s fictional narratives and then goes on to consider how the passage inspires new ways of thinking about the university’s mission. Throughout, Baker and Bilbro argue that instead of training students to live in their careers, universities should educate students to inhabit and serve their places. The authors also offer practical suggestions for how students, teachers, and administrators might begin implementing these ideas. Baker and Bilbro conclude that institutions guided by Berry’s vision might cultivate citizens who can begin the work of healing their communities—graduates who have been educated for responsible membership in a family, a community, or a polity.
Download or read book It All Turns on Affection written by Wendell Berry and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An impassioned and rigorous appeal for reconnection to the land and human feeling by one of America’s most heartfelt and humble writers. When he accepted the invitation to deliver The Jefferson Lecture—our nation’s highest honor for distinguished intellectual achievement—Wendell Berry decided to take on the obligation of thinking again about the problems that have engaged him throughout his long career. He wanted a fresh start, not only in looking at the groundwork of the problems facing our nation and the earth itself, but in gaining hope from some examples of repair and healing even in these times of Late Capitalism and its destructive contagions. As a poet and writer he understood already that much can be gleaned from looking at the vocabulary of these problems themselves and how we describe them. And he settled on “affection” as a method of engagement and solution. The result is the greatest speech he has delivered in his six decades of public life. It All Turns on Affection will take its place alongside The Unsettling of America and The Gift of Good Land as major testaments to the power and clarity of his contribution to American thought. Also included are a small handful of other recent essays and a wonderful conversation between Mr. Berry, his wife Tanya Berry, and the head of the National Endowment of the Humanities Jim Leech, which took place just after the award was announced. The result offers a wonderful continuation of the long conversation Berry has had with his readers over many years and as well as a fine introduction to his life and work. “These powerful, challenging essays show why Berry’s vision of a sustainable, human–scaled society has proven so influential.” —Publishers Weekly “Wendell Berry is one of those rare individuals who speaks to us always of responsibility, of the individual cultivation of an active and aware participation in the arts of life.” —The Bloomsbury Review
Download or read book Virtues of Renewal written by Jeffrey Bilbro and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2018-12-14 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over fifty years, Wendell Berry has argued that our most pressing ecological and cultural need is a renewed formal intelligence -- a mode of thinking and acting that fosters the health of the earth and its beings. Yet the present industrial economy prioritizes a technical, self-centered way of relating to the world that often demands and rewards busyness over thoughtful observation, independence over relationships, and replacing over repairing. Such a system is both unsustainable and results in destructive, far-reaching consequences for our society and land. In Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry's Sustainable Forms, Jeffrey Bilbro combines textual analysis and cultural criticism to explain how Berry's literary forms encourage readers to practice virtues of renewal. While the written word alone cannot enact change, Bilbro asserts that Berry's poetry, essays, and fiction can inspire people to, as Berry writes, "practice resurrection." Bilbro examines the distinct, yet symbiotic, features of these three genres, demonstrating the importance of the humanities in supporting tenable economies. He uses Berry's pieces to suggest the need for more robust language for discussing conservation, ecology, and the natural -- and regenerative -- process of death. Bilbro additionally translates Berry's literature to a wider audience, putting him in conversation with philosophers and theologians such as Ivan Illich, Willie Jennings, Charles Taylor, and Augustine. The lessons that Berry and his work have to offer are not only for those interested in cultivating the land, but also for those who cultivate their communities and live mindfully. In short, these lessons are pertinent to all who are willing to make an effort to live the examined life. Such formative work is not dramatic or quick, but it can foster the deep and lasting transformation necessary to develop a more sustainable culture and economy.
Download or read book The Politics of Gratitude written by Mark T. Mitchell and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Americans are longing for alternative politics rooted in strong communities, recognition of limits, and respect for the natural world. These issues are not the possession of one political party. Rather, they refer to ideas rooted deeply in the best aspects of our common tradition, and they represent yearnings that many, regardless of political affiliation, share. This book articulates a cultural and political vision that leads one off the couch and into the garden, out of the shopping mall and into the farmersÆ market, and away from Washington in the direction of home. In this postpartisan call to action, political theorist Mark T. Mitchell develops the concept of the ôpolitics of gratitude,ö which revolves around four ideas: creatureliness, gratitude, human scale, and place, culminating in a distinctive, fruitful view of human nature and community at odds with the prevailing norms of individualism (and, not so paradoxically, statism), giantism, and hypermobility. Going beyond the liberal-conservative factionalism that has reduced our political and cultural discourse to clichTs and vitriol, he urges us to become responsible stewards of the earth who are committed to family and community and who abide in gratitude, taking nothing for granted. The result is a political and cultural vision that is at once local, limited, modest, republican, greenùand grateful.
Download or read book Short Stories and Political Philosophy written by Erin A. Dolgoy and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Short Stories and Political Philosophy: Power, Prose, and Persuasion explores the relationship between fictional short stories and the classic works of political philosophy. This edited volume addresses the innovative ways that short stories grapple with the same complex political and moral questions, concerns, and problems studied in the fields of political philosophy and ethics. The volume is designed to highlight the ways in which short stories may be used as an access point for the challenging works of political philosophy encountered in higher education. Each chapter analyzes a single story through the lens of thinkers ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Max Weber and Hannah Arendt. The contributors to this volume do not adhere to a single theme or intellectual tradition. Rather, this volume is a celebration of the intellectual and literary diversity available to students and teachers of political philosophy. It is a resource for scholars as well as educators who seek to incorporate short stories into their teaching practice.
Download or read book Leisure and Labor written by Anthony P. Coleman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-11-27 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using Josef Pieper's Leisure as a point of departure, the contributors to this volume share a mutual concern for the diminishing role of the liberal arts in Catholic higher education. The overwhelming impression they share is that U.S. Catholic universities, with notable exceptions, have forgotten the very goal of university education, and especially Catholic university education: to aid in forming young men and women to pursue the truth and helping them to become freer persons.
Download or read book NAFTA Revisited written by Gary Clyde Hufbauer and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2005-10-15 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAFTA entered into force in 1994 after a bitter Congressional debate. But NAFTA in operation has proved no less controversial than NAFTA before ratification, for both supporters and opponents of trade liberalization have cited experience with the agreement to justify their positions. To provide a factual basis for this ongoing debate, the authors evaluate NAFTA's performance over the first seven years, comparing actual experience with both the objectives of the agreement's supporters and the charges of its critics. They then examine future challenges and opportunities in the trade and investment relationships among the three partner countries and the broader implications for new trade initiatives throughout the hemisphere.
Download or read book Stand By Me written by Wendell Berry and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-07-04 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A woven time-travelling book, about love, land, life ... Short stories that link together like trees in a forest' Jackie Morris On a clear Kentucky night in 1888, a young woman risks her life to save a stranger from a drunken mob. Almost a hundred years later, her great-grandson Andy climbs a hill at the edge of town, and is flooded with memories of all he has lived, seen and heard of the past century - of farmers wooing schoolteachers and soldiers trudging home from war; of the first motor car, the Great Depression and Vietnam; of neighbourly feuds and family secrets; of grief and betrayal - and of great friendship that endures for a lifetime. These are Wendell Berry's tales of Port William, a little farming community nestled deep in the Kentucky River valley. They unravel the story of a town over the course of four generations, lovingly chronicling the intertwined lives of the families who call it home. Affectionate, elegiac and wry, these uplifting rural fables invite us to witness the beauty and quiet heroism at the heart of each ordinary, interconnected life.
Download or read book Localism in the Mass Age written by Mark T. Mitchell and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-04-02 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States the conventional left/right distinction has become increasingly irrelevant, if not harmful. The reigning political, cultural, and economic visions of both the Democrats and the Republicans have reached obvious dead ends. Liberalism, with its hostility to any limits, is collapsing. So-called Conservatism has abandoned all pretense of conserving anything at all. Both dominant parties seem fundamentally incapable of offering coherent solutions for the problems that beset us. In light of this intellectual, cultural, and political stalemate, there is a need for a new vision. Localism in the Mass Age: A Front Porch Republic Manifesto assembles thirty-one essays by a variety of scholars and practitioners--associated with Front Porch Republic--seeking to articulate a new vision for a better future. The writers are convinced that human apprehension of the true, the good, and the beautiful is best realized within a dense web of meaningful family, neighborhood, and community relationships. These writers seek to advance human flourishing through the promotion of political decentralism, economic localism, and cultural regionalism. In short, Front Porch Republic is dedicated to renewing American culture by fostering the ideals necessary for strong communities.
Download or read book Faith Freedom and Higher Education written by P. C. Kemeny and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-03-11 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While debates abound today over the cost, purpose, and effectiveness of higher education, often lost in this conversation is a critical question: Should higher education attempt to shape students' moral and spiritual character in any systematic manner as in the past, or focus upon equipping students with mere technical knowledge? Faith, Freedom, and Higher Education argues that Christianity can still play an important role in contemporary American higher education. George M. Marsden, D. G. Hart, and George H. Nash, among its authors, analyze the debate over the secularization of the university and the impact of liberal Protestantism and fundamentalism on the American academy during the twentieth century. Contributors also assess how the ideas of Dorothy Sayers, C. S. Lewis, Wendell Berry, and Allan Bloom can be used to improve Christian higher education. Finally, the volume examines the contributions Christian faith can make to collegiate education and outlines how Christian institutions can preserve their religious mission while striving for academic excellence.
