[Berry's] refusal to abandon the local for the global, to sacrifice neighborliness, community integrity, and economic diversity for access to Walmart, has never seemed more appealing, nor his questions of personal accountability more powerful.--Kirkus Reviews
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.
Citizenship Papers collects nineteen new essays, from celebrations of exemplary lives to critiques of American life, including A Citizen's Response [to the new National Security Strategy]--a ringing call of caution to a nation standing on the brink of global catastrophe.
The courage of a book, it has been said, is that it looks away from nothing. Here is a brave book. --The Charlotte Observer
Berry says that these recent essays mostly say again what he has said before. His faithful readers may think he hasn't, however, said any of it better before.--Booklist (starred review)
Table of Contents:
A Citizen's Response -- Thoughts in the Presence of Feat -- The Failure of War -- Going to Work -- In Distrust of Movements -- Twelve Paragraphs on Biotechnology -- Let the Farm Judge -- The Total Economy -- A Long Job, Too Late to Quit -- Two Minds -- The Prejudice Against Country People -- The Whole Horse -- Stupidity in Concentration -- Watershed and Commonwealth -- The Agrarian Standard -- Still Standing -- Conservationist and Agrarian -- Tuscany -- Is Life a Miracle?.
Wendell Berry is the author of fifty books of poetry, fiction, and essays. He was recently awarded the Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the Louis Bromfield Society Award. For over forty years he has lived and farmed with his wife, Tanya, in Kentucky.
Counterpoint LLC
Pub Date: October 01, 2014
0.6" H x 8.9" L x 6.0" W
190 pages
paperback