Right at the moment my reading is taking a hard turn into the work of Wendell Berry—this time inadvertently. I am reading the Omnivores Dilemma. A popular book tracing the history of four meals and arguing for a more local (and human) food economy. It is an interesting book. More on this next week when I finish.

I am also reading Berry’s Home Economics. It is a brilliant book of essays on home, nature, institutional life and schooling. He always sort of knocks me over. The first essay in the book, entitled “Getting along with Nature” is worth the price of any copy that you pay for (buy it used for cheap like I did). It is a devastating critique of both modern man—who sees nature as a foe to be conquered—and environmental man—who sees nature as something to be left untouched. Berry cuts thought all this propaganda shouted by both groups and casts a (strikingly biblical) vision for man as a gardener. He dismisses the vision of modern life based on cheap and unsustainable energy and a willingness to befoul one part of the world for the benefit of another. He also, however, wields an equally devastating critique of radical environmentalism which has some hope that man can live in the world without touching it. Berry asks the more helpful question. How can we live faithfully and well in a place? How can we touch the earth in a way that makes a good place for us, and improves a place (both nature and the community) that yields a better life for our children and future generations? This is a very interesting questions. It is shocking to me how little I know, and I fear we know, concerning the answer to this question.

Anyway, I high recommend Home Economics to you. It should be on your must read list for Berry which should now include:

Non-Fiction: What are People For, The Agrarian Essays (especially “Sex, Community, Freedom, and Economy”), The Unsettling of America, and, now, Home Economics.

Fiction: Jayber Crow, That Distant Land, and The Memory of Old Jack

Read these and you will do well