A great place to start for those who are not familiar with Berry’s work; for those who are, it will be a nostalgic stroll...
A pleasing selection of essays from the lifelong farmer and award-winning writer.
It’s a wonder that Berry (The Art of Loading Brush: New Agrarian Writings, 2017, etc.) gets any work done on his Kentucky farm given his prodigious literary output. He has written hundreds of essays, and English author Kingsnorth has carefully selected 31 of them, published from 1968 to 2011, to represent the “essential” Berry. Key words in the essay titles signal Berry’s ongoing concerns: nature, work, rugged individualism, citizenship, and agriculture. Throughout, he promotes caretaking, faith-keeping, kindness, and peace. In the introduction, Kingsnorth notes, “soil is the recurring image in these essays.” In 1989, Berry wrote, “we persist in land-use methods that reduce the potentially infinite power of soil fertility to a finite quantity, which we then proceed to waste as if it were an infinite quantity.” The author champions the “renewal of rural communities,” which must be accomplished “from the inside by the ancient rule of neighborliness, by the love of precious things, and by the wish to be at home.” In a fine piece on regional literature, Berry laments Twain’s conclusion to Huckleberry Finn, which “fails in failing to imagine a responsible, adult community life.” Instead, he pines for the “beloved community” of Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs. Berry also argues fiercely that “illiteracy is both a personal and a public danger.” Literacy, he writes, “is not an ornament, but a necessity.” Though the author is generally fairly somber, his 1987 essay explaining why he won’t buy a computer reveals a sly sense of humor: “If the use of a computer is a new idea, then a newer idea is not to use one.”
A great place to start for those who are not familiar with Berry’s work; for those who are, it will be a nostalgic stroll down a rural, wooded Memory Lane. In this day and age, his writings are must-reads.Pub Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64009-028-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
A heartfelt if quixotic critique of America's role as a ranking supplier of weaponry, from the executive director of the Winston Foundation for World Peace. Drawing on a variety of sources, Tirman (Empty Promise, 1986, etc.) focuses on two client states, Iran and Turkey, and the role of the American-made Sikorsky helicopter, to make his absorbing case against the emergence of the US as a leader in the transnational arms trade. Characterizing the so-called Nixon Doctrine as political cover for America's exit from Vietnam, he charges that it was subsequently employed to justify making Iran and later Turkey regional military powers in aid of stabilizing the oil-rich Middle East. The author goes on to assert that these initiatives failed as Tehran became home base for a theocracy famously hostile to the West and Ankara used state-of-the-art Sikorsky helicopters to oppress Turkey's Kurdish minority. At the same time that he details the horrific uses to which US armaments have been put, Tirman recounts the hard times that followed the end of the Cold War and the consequent decline in defense budgets as well as an increase in coproduction deals with offshore customers. Although the author makes a good job of illustrating the problems that can accrue from Washington's bipartisan efforts to make advanced US weapons key instruments of economic and foreign policy, his briefly stated proposals for preventing them stand in need of a reality check. Arguing that voluntary sales curbs by America would bring other vendor nations (China, France, Germany, et al.) into line, for example, he urges establishing benchmark standards for human rights and social programs in client countries. Similarly, Tirman commends preventive diplomacy, heavy taxes on imported petroleum, and a ban on exports of offensive weapons to states that might abuse them. A spirited and principled assault on the US's latter-day status as a merchant of death, albeit one more notable for pacifist passion than practicality.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-684-82726-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
An impressive attempt to clarify the complex political, ethical, legal, and medical factors impacting the American way of death and care of the dying. Originating as an article called ``The Art of Dying'' for New York magazine, this work draws on research into both the dying process and the right-to-die controversy. Webb, a former editor-in- chief of Psychology Today, argues with considerable passion and great effectiveness that ``if we are to have good deaths, the culture of dying must change.'' She attended medical training seminars, visited hospitals, hospices, and palliative-care centers, and interviewed numerous dying patients and their families, doctors and clerics, lawyers and ethicists, conservatives and liberals, and such prominent figures as Dr. Jack Kevorkian and Elizabeth KÅbler-Ross. That dying well is possible is shown in her first chapter, featuring a young woman who, after a roller coaster ride of hope and despair prompted by various treatments for her cancer, chose to die at home, in peace, surrounded by her family. That such a death is difficult to achieve is demonstrated by most of the remaining chapters. Pain management is not well understood by many physicians, extreme treatments can prolong the dying process, families of the terminally ill often bear heavy financial and emotional burdens, the wishes of dying patients and their families are frequently overlooked, and hospice care may offer too little too late. Webb spells out the details in human stories. She also tackles the legal isues, from the Karen Ann Quinlan case of the 1970s to the latest Supreme Court decision that assisted suicide is not a constitutional right. Webb concludes with the ten major reforms— including legalization and strict regulation of assisted suicide—that she believes are essential if a good death is to become the rule, not the exception. A noteworthy contribution to the continuing public debate over an issue that touches everyone.
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 1997
ISBN: 0-553-09555-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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