Berry Books

Why did the majority of the Todds choose the South over the North? Their's was a border state that stayed in the Union. They owned too few slaves to have fortunes staked on the system. On p. 174 Berry defines the Todds as being "shrill with hatred... collapsed in self interest and grief". What drove them to this?

Are they really "a once happy family" as Berry says? The litigation over their father's estate belies this. The litigation not only left their father's second wife (mother of 6?) dependent, but also disinherited those, like Mary, who had already had gifts from the father. Did early favoritism cause the rift as much as the war?

Lincoln appears to be the model brother-in-law. Risking charges of favoritism and nepotism, Lincoln helps his Union oriented brothers-in-law (who also married Todds), giving one the ability to contract for provisions (which he exploits and when challenged threatens blackmail) and another a coveted army position away from the fray in the west. He entertains a Confederate Todd in the White House, and provides a pardon for another who will not take an oath of allegiance to the country that pardons her. His tolerance and charity towards his family recalls his tolerance of McClellan and a host of cabinet officers of similarly dubious motives.

Mary personalizes the Confederate allegiance in her family as a fight against her. Maybe Mary was close to being right. Some seem to bask in the status of being able to malign a relative. Others just expect too much which can breed disappointment even under normal conditions. Maybe some of their intensity was a family rebellion against the one grown up who, by chance, had married into their family.

While the book is short, it is not entirely focused. For a book on the family, too many of its precious paragraphs are devoted to sketching the war such as the battles of Manassas and Shiloh and the seige of Vicksburg. I would have liked a reference table in the beginning showing the birth order of the Todds and their marriages. Most importantly it needs some discussion on why the Todds did what they did.

In a lighthearted afterward the author describes his research. While a lot went into this effort, I hope it is not thorough, because I would like to know more of these Todds.

Stephen Berry's work House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War is a wonderful addition to the field of Lincoln historiography. His work is very insightful to the machinations of the Todd family. The Todd's were truly a family divided by the Civil War and its aftermath. The work is well written and researched throughly by the author. Lincoln's extended family, i.e. the Todd's were surely an embarassment for the president and his wife. However, even though many of the Todd's were confederate sympathizers, Lincoln always was supportive of his wife's sisters. This is a fine work on Lincoln and essential for Lincolnites to read.

This is an entirely new perspective of the Lincoln family, specifically that of his wife's. While there is much known about Abraham Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, as well as their oldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, who was the only child to live to a ripe old age, I know very little about the Todd Family, and was especially intrigued that a book had finally been written on this little known side of the Lincoln family. Although the book was short, and, as admitted by the author, only a cursory story of several of the members of the Todd family could be done, it was admittedly an interesting book and whetted my appetite for additional information on the Todd Family. I found that the book added a few more pieces to the complex character and personality of Abraham Lincoln the man, and found further that his "melancholia" that is so much discussed was not solely due to the failures of many of his generals, the exorbitant loss of life in the battles of the conflict, the political intrigues of the Radical Republicans and the Democratic-Copperheads, but also partly due to the inner family turmoil that he and Mary experienced with their own family, specifically the Todds. Truly, Abraham Lincoln was quite prophetic when he said that a "House divided against itself cannot stand", and surely this could be said of the Todd family who themselves were divided with several family members serving in the armed forces of the Confederacy and the Union, several killed in battle, and one assassinated. I would recommend this book, and hope to see further detailed studies of the Todd Family in the future.

Their have been some good Civil War family biographies lately. The Whalen's book on the Fighting McCook's and this book on the Todd family come to mind. Family biographies can help us understand the human cost of the Civil War as no other histories can. As family members die, we understand the war's causalities in very personal terms gaining an idea of what this costs those involved.

The McCook family had no conflicted loyalties, no question of who to fight for nor any hesitations in committing to a side. They were able to establish a record of service fighting for the Union that was unique. The Todd family had conflicted loyalties, questions on who to fight for and hesitated in committing to a side. A large slave owning family from Kentucky with an in-law in the White House would cause problems for everyone. Lincoln, his wife, her brothers & sisters their spouses created a series of confrontations, personal and political problems that make up this story.

The author introduces the Todd family and the principle people giving us a solid foundation for the story. Lincoln tries to keep as much of the family on the Union side as possible. His efforts delay some members "going South" and produce some real political problems in 1861 for him. Each year of the war is a chapter. This allows us to follow everyone from assignment to assignment or battle to battle. Against this backdrop, Lincoln's personal life and family problems becomes worse and worse. Each newspaper story, each battle death adds to Lincoln's problems and Mary's woes. However, at Springfield as Lincoln is buried, the Todd in-laws stand as family.

The author is easy to read and manages to keep all the story lines together. These are not likable people and he clearly does not like them. This come through in a number of places and may have colored the story. In addition, the author makes misstatements about the battle of Shiloh and the POW exchange. None of his mistakes are major but he is accepting of popular stories as opposed to good scholarship. A nice touch is to take each person from 1865 to his or her death. This is always something I look for in this type of book and feel is really important. The author does an excellent job on each person giving the reader a feel for who they were.

Overall, this is a very readable book. The people are well drawn allowing us to see their world and have some understanding of their choices. In addition, the author shows how the divisions in Lincoln's personal family helped him reach out to the national family as reflected in many of his speeches.

Abraham Lincoln is one of the most-written about men in the English language. As a long-time Lincoln-buff, I don't mind that there are so many books, but I have to admit, I occasionally wonder if we've reached diminishing returns. A lot of Lincoln books are what I'd call "old wine in new bottles."

But House of Abraham really is that rare thing: a truly new and important perspective on Abraham Lincoln. Having read most of what there is on Abraham and Mary, let me just say what I think is new here: First, the author fleshes out the Southern wing of the Todd family for the first time. These are some seriously colorful characters: David Todd was arrested for desecrating corpses in a Richmond jail; Samuel Todd and Alex Todd were Confederate soldiers killed in action; George Todd abused African-American prisoners who had been taken while storming Battery Wagner; Emilie Todd, widow of a Confederate Brigadier, spent a week in the White House, despite the scandal; Margaret Todd smuggled contraband through Union lines, on and on. In all my reading I'd never known any of this.

Second, the author connects these scandals to Mary's growing unpopularity in Washington. Many books have mentioned that Mary lost three half-brothers on the rebel side (the author proves that it was only two), but none have demonstrated so clearly why her family-ties became such a problem.

Finally, while House of Abraham begins as a book about the Todds, it becomes more and more a meditation on family, on the nation as a family, and on Lincoln's evolving understanding of the War. Ultimately, the author convinced me that Lincoln saw the Todds as a microcosm of the nation and that he understood the war as a "mosaic of family crises."

As some of the other reviewers have pointed out, the book isn't very long, but considering it limits itself to saying something actually new about the most-written-about-man-in-America, I don't think that's surprising. Team of Rivals (which I loved) was 900 pages, but not that much of it was new. It was really the framing that was so impressive. In fact, I'd recommend reading Team of Rivals and then House of Abraham in succession. They make a terrific pair.

It's still a Gem.
I am just a general reader. I defer to others expertise and
acknowledge my ignorance.
The purpose of this Literature is to: ignite and sustain a
passion. Not to: promote one's own vain-glorious interests
or "crown" oneself at others expense.
Although I read other Greek Editions, this one will always
have a place in my library. Worn print and all- I think it
enhances it by contributing to a sense of time and distance.
You may have some age related eye issues.
King James works for me, gets better and better.

I've gotten over 10 years of good use out of mine since buying it. No regrets at all.

The print is a bit smaller than I'd like, but of course, its a natural tradeoff: if the print were larger, the book would have to be bigger, and of course, less convenient to carry around. Otherwise, I consider this to be an excellent book, conveniently sized, and a very good value overall. Definitely worth the price.

It's not too impressive. The print type is small, and needs to be reset, because many of the pages are not printed evenly, some have hardly any ink on them. I sent for a replacement, thinking my copy was just defective, but the replacement had worse printing quality than the original they sent me. The paper is good quality, and I like the Lexicon and Synonyms at the back. I got it for $17, and it is worth the price, but I would only use it for reference and not for daily study. If the print quality was better, and the font a bit larger, I would have given it a higher rating.

THIS IS A GREAT TOOL FOR THE STUDENT OF THE HEW TESTAMENT, THE GREEK STUDENT, THE PERSON INTERESTED IN EXIGESIS FOR ANY REASON.
THE LAYOUT IS GOOD AND THE AIDS ARE INDISPENSIBLE. THE PUBLISHER MIGHT HAVE GIVEN US LARGER PRINT FOR EASIER READING. I AM AN INTERESTED STUDENT IN THE RELATION OF RELIGION AND POLITICS. THIS BOOK HAS BEEN A VALUABLE TOOL FOR MANY YEARS AND I KEEP IT WHERE I CAN FIND IT EASILY. YHIS MAY GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF HOW WIDE THE NEED FOR THIS IS. ENLIGHTENMENT THROUGH THE STUDY OF THE ORIGINAL TEXT IS ANOTHER BENEFIT OF THE INTERLINEAR VERSION. IT OFFERS A GOOD INTRODUCTION TO THE GREEK LABNGUAGE AND A REFRESHER COURSE FOR THOSE WHO STUDIED IT TOO LONG AGO.

This is a great all-in-one-tool for those who desire to find the original Greek words from which the English Bible (KJV) is translated, yet who have little or no knowledge of Greek. Under each Greek word is given its literal English equivalent, along with the King James Version in the margins, so that the student can follow along from his/her own Bible. The Greek text used is that of Robert Stephens of 1550, the famed "Textus Receptus," often known by its more popular name, "The Majority Text." In addition, at the back of the book a condensed, but helpful, lexicon is supplied along with an abridged version of Trench's "Synonyms of the N.T." An excellent tool for anyone wishing to "study to show thyself approved unto God" (2 Tim. 2:15)."

I really liked this approach to discipline in theory, but it just dosen't cut it in the real world. I have a very headstrong toddler and he walked all over me with these approaches. I really like Is it a Big Problem or a Little Problem?, which I am currently reading. It has many more real-life solutions than the Discipline book did.

The advice in this book sounds very nice and gentle and compassionate but the problem is that it works only on children who are obedient and fairly submissive by nature. Lots of kids figure out the game after a while. What if your child refuses to stay in "time out"? What happens when you have taken away all the privileges? (and little kids just don't have that many). What about older kids who just laugh at this kind of approach?You'd better go buy another book because Dr. Brazelton doesn't address real discipline problems.

Discipline teaches our children right from wrong and to care about doing right, to think of others before themselves. Too bad we can't raise the current generation of adults all over again. Hopefully today's parents, with the help of this book, will do better.

This is the most useful book on parenting I've ever read. It is clear, straightforward, practical, and respectful of children and parents. Thank you.

I read the book as soon as I got it home. We were having discipline problems with out almost 4 year old and with a new sibling in the mix we didn't want to make drastic changes again in his life. I often read the book when I'm frustrated by my childrens actions and it helps me to understand their way of thinking and how to make the correct discipline choices to fit the exact situation. Thanks Berry Brazelton!

this is the first book i've read about the royal family. i do trust everything this housekeeper says in the book. she seems very trustworthy and gets into VERY specific details (gossip!) is it wrong for her to have written this book? probably, but who cares?! you get to see the true sides of charles and diana's personalities, from how they treat their help, to how they treat their kids and each other. i read through the whole book with interest, so i must give it a good rating.

I bought this book several years ago and have just re-read it.

It's an interesting look at life inside the Royal Family. Well, at least one part of it. The self-centeredness of Prince Charles is not surprising. He expects every whim to be catered to without question and immediately. He comes across as very spoiled and out of touch.

Princess Diana is another matter. Her instability is so apparent. It is too bad that she did not get professional help.

The last sentence, "But where is it all going to end?" is sad when you think about what happened to Diana.

The author doesn't take sides, but has given us a good look into the private lives of a very unhappy family.

The book is written by the woman who worked as housekeeper to Prince Charles and Princess Diana for eight years. Much is made of the fact that it was "banned in Britain" - because the writer breached the confidentiality agreement she signed when she took the job, and would have had to give up the income from it had it been published in the UK. This sums up the book. It's a tattletale book, a dreadful breach of confidence on her part, and heavy on judgement about the royals and their lifestyle. In view of this, I find that I cannot take what Berry says on trust - she's a judgmental gossip and as such not about to write a truth and nothing but the truth book. If you want to read gossip, you will enjoy this book. It's not very well written, the grammar is poor, and Berry is not a good writer. She jumps around in time with her anecdotes, which are based only on what she saw as housekeeper, in one place where the royals lived. Since she was not with them when they were working, she does not describe the work involved, and makes no allowances for how exhausting it must have been, nor can she imagine this. She is critical of Princess Diana, and delighted to pass on others' criticism, while having no insight into what made the Princess what she was. It's a poor, shabby book.

It's a fun read, no doubt about it. Being a Midwestern girl, I'll never know what it's like to be a royal and I found this insider's view fascinating. To be fabulously wealthy, yet get all manner of freebies and presents. To have a staff there ready to wait on you, yet to never be away from their judgemental eyes. What a life! No wonder both Charles and Diana were spoiled and far from perfect. I don't see how anyone could be remotely normal given the lives they led. For this peek into Highgrove, I was grateful. However, Ms. Berry herself seems rather unlikeable. Always gossiping, making sure we know that's she's more educated that the Prince and Princess realized, saying that Diana never would have "dared" lose her famous temper with the housekeeper, it kept me shaking my head. Like other, I'm sure, I suspect if she didn't take this job in the first place just to pen a tell-all.

I got this book from Ebay as it was out of print. And Banned
in London. It was a good book all in all. But, I learned nothing
really new. We all know that Diana had alot of problems
I guess I would as well if I lived with the Royals. Not an
easy family to live with. She did her job and won the hearts
of many people. She is still a hero in my heart. Hey, she was
a person before she was royal.

The book others imitate. The difinitive source of information about sustainable gardening (agriculture on any scale, actually), with understandable diagrams and explanations. The concepts are simple; the work much easier than the old-fashioned "row garden"; the results are more bountiful; your health benefits; the fertility of your soil grows; the environment improves.

This will become your bible for planting and growing without chemical fertilizers, insecticides, or weed control.

The sustainable methods of producing the food we eat in a small space makes more sense than the wastful techniques perfected and promoted in the last two generations.

If you can buy only one book on gardening -- this should be the one.

Other resources to consider: "The Backyard Homestead" (Jeavons, et al); "Square Foot Gardening" (Bartholomew) - similar ideas; "Five Acres And Independence" (Kains).

Survival is simpler if it has been your way of life.

After reading the reviews of others, I excitedly bought this book. It turned out to be a relic of the 70's, with all kinds of abstract philosophizing about how putting organic matter into soil is going to save the world. Perhaps revolutionary for its time, it's not very useful for the serious modern gardener.

Although this thin book has gone through five reprints, the passing years seem to have added little in the way of real information. Sure, knowing how to turn soil with hand tools and make a compost pile is useful, but most modern books handle that in a couple of pages. The book's policy of zero tolerance for chemical fertilizer and pesticides is an admirable ideal but a tad too stringent for me. I found the "charts" little more than unfinished notes that were largely indecipherable. The book offers dubious, sometimes contradictory, advice, including instructions on planting by the phases of the Moon. Sources for supplies are referenced with old-fashioned snail-mail addresses rather than 1-800 numbers or URLs. The book has no index!

Frankly, much of the text seems to be self-promotion for the Cause, worthy as it may be, rather than offering solid gardening tips. If you really want to grow more vegetables, get Dick Raymond's Joy of Gardening. He's plenty "green" and offers practical approaches to getting food out of the ground.

This book is suposed to revolutionize how home gardeners around the world can become self sustaining and yet it can't even be published using metric measures! How do they translate this to other languages and don't even bother using a measurement system that the majority of the world uses?? What a careless oversite on the part of the publisher AND author.
...

This book is not just about growing more vegetables in the vein of "Throw some more ferterlizer on in the garden!" This book is about a way of life, a philosophy. It gives one a whole systems view of healthy, living soil creation and plant growing. When one reads, absorbs and applies the material, it becomes almost a religious experience.

This title grew from a 1971 experimental garden in Palo Alto, California instigated by Alan Chadwick and Stephen Kafka. That garden showed that using the biodynamic/French Intensive method produced four times more vegetables than conventional techniques.

Biodynamic techniques were developed by Austrian genius Rudolf Steiner. French Intensive methods were developed in the 1890s by market gardeners outside Paris, a time when horses provided more-than-ample fertilizer and the city provided a ready market for vegetables. Chadwick studied under Steiner and French gardeners.

The method requires double-digging garden beds and adding compost or aged manure. Double-digging to two feet in depth provides loose soil that roots easily penetrate. Plants are seeded or transplanted very close together and form a living mulch, shading roots, causing greater water retention, denying sunlight to weeds. Other aspects of the method are planting and transplanting by the phases of the moon and daily sprinkling rather than periodical flooding.

This material has been recycled four times since the 1974 typewritten edition. I regret to report it is no longer up-to-date gardening knowledge, it will intimidate beginning gardeners, and it will bore experienced gardeners. There is only one new chapter, titled Sustainability, which is mostly promotion of Ecology Action. In addition, Jeavons seems confused. In the first four editions he wrote that he was teaching us the "biodynamic/French intensive method" of Steiner and French gardeners as learned and taught by Chadwick. Now in a chapter titled A Perspective for the Future, he writes that his work is based on the "Chinese Biointensive way of farming." Yet nowhere does he advocate or tell how to use humanure, which is the basis of Chinese food production, as first shown by F.H. King in his book, Farmers of Forty Centuries. Only in the bibliography do we find book listings under the heading: Human Waste. The huge bibliography (36 pages, was 22 pages in the last edition) apparently lists every book and catalog in the Ecology Action library but there is NO INDEX! I find the lack of an index in a nonfiction book to be unforgivable. For instance, looking for crop rotation or mulching methods means scanning the entire 201 pages--and coming up empty.

There are pages and pages of drawings and technical charts that most readers will never use. We find listings of plants and information both barely usable--seeds per ounce, pounds consumed per average person per year--and important--bed spacing, yields--although there is no recognition or advice concerning the many soil types and growing zones. One is dismayed to find--in a book titled How to Grow More Vegetables--more pages of charts about grain, protein source, vegetable oil crops; cover, organic matter, fodder crops; energy, fiber paper and other crops; tree and cane crops--20 pages in all, than about vegetable crops--8 pages.

Promotion of Ecology Action uses a fourteen-page chapter in addition to six more pages of self-promotion in the Sustainability chapter. If you want to support Jeavons' work, send a check to Ecology Action, or buy his book, The Sustainable Vegetable Garden, adapted from this book by co-author Carol Cox, which is smaller and less expensive and has all his best stuff without the wasted pages of charts, drawings and promotion, and it has an index! If you want current gardening information, read authors such as Eliot Coleman and Dick Raymond who are progressive and work with all garden designs, including the mulch method first popularized by Ruth Stout and now used by hundreds of my gardening friends across the country. Most of us have tried the double-dig method and have long since moved on. I recommend you not waste your time, except maybe once for new gardens, depending on soil conditions. Thereafter, use mulch, save your back and spend your time and energy on better pursuits.

American presidents, understandably and out of what must be very close to grammatical necessity, have always used the pronoun "We" to speak of American policy. Yet in 2002, Berry said President Bush's use of this "We" was the royal "we" and ran counter to the Declaration of Independence.

Rather than being laughed at, Berry's essay has been anthologized and praised. It's time to speak the truth: never have inanity and insipidity been so fused in one author to the extent that they are fused in the ridiculous Wendell Berry.

A small book with little development. Perhaps if your taste runs to that, it might be okay. I think I would find it a confusing introduction to Berry and hesitate to recommend it to newcomers to Berry. The second essay is particularly brief. Readers who do not know Berry might better sample essays in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, a collection that locates Berry in his particular landscape, and explicates his ideas about "Agrarian Economics" and "Agrarian Religion." The first essay is a series of twenty-seven numbered statements. It can be found online. The third essay contains some solid ideas. Movement efforts are often "insincere," Berry argues, in that they focus on policy or other people's behavior, not on the behavior that we can best change--our own. This, in a sense takes us back to the numbered statements which are advices for living towards a changed world. Berry is worth reading, but this does not seem a book for beginners nor for experienced Berry readers.

It has taken 5 years, but the ideas expressed by Wendell Berry shortly after 9/11 are finally starting to spread. Thought XXIII In the Presence of Fear - " We must not again allow public emotion or the public media to caricature our enemies. If our enemies are now to be some nations of Islam, then we should undertake to know those enemies. Our schools should begin to teach the histories, cultures, arts, and languages of the Islamic nations. And our leaders should have the humility and the wisdom to ask the reasons some of the people have for hating us."

As I hear more and more frustration from those caught in the mechanical web of phone tree "service" and the difficulty of having problems addressed by a real person, Berry's call for Local Economies rings loud and true. For the sake of real security, for the sake of community and knowing where your food or other goods come from, for the sake of jobs for our kids, his words should be carefully considered.

For fuller treatment of the subjects discussed in these essays, read Wendell Berry's new book, "The Way of Ignorance".

This book helped me to see how modern so-called self-named "First World" countries are guided by the worship of the dollar. One can take it to the next level and say that ultimately racial and class issues today are a result of this love of the dollar and that white supremacism in this world is based on it. In order to dismantle white supremacy you need to get to the heart of it's greed which creates a necessary lack of respect for humanity and ultimately LIFE on earth. God's creations are sorely put upon for the sake of vain greed. America has caused problems in this world and has yet to fully face them. I say this as an igbo woman born here in america being forced daily to realize things mainstream whites can and do ignore.

These nice and thoughtful essays were already in Berry's "Citizenship Papers: Essays" I wish I had known that before I bought both.

It's always time to detox, so rid yourself of toxins now. This book is clear, concise and filled with information for beginners and experienced detoxers alike. Dr. Linda Berry can show you the easy, complete method that works! Buy the book, follow the instructions and get healthier.

You'll be glad you did.

Joanne Victoria
[...]

Being the author of two books on cleansing and rejuvenating the body, The Amazing Liver and Gallbladder Flush, and Timeless Secrets of Health & Rejuvenation, I can only praise Linda's precious work and recommend it to anyone interest in improving his health. Without cleansing the organs and systems of the body we stand little chance of being healthy or restoring our health in this pollution-ridden world. These types of books are what the population now needs to overcome the current impasse that stifles our health care system and makes this a very sick country. Taking responsibilty for our own health is the only real way out of the current crisis that afflicts so many. Reading this book is an eye-opener and will serve you well on your path to good and lasting health.

A lot of good information for only one book, you will learn alot about fasting and how your colon and stomach work. A good read for the first timer or people really into health. If you're interested in cleansing yourself or just learning the benefits of why you should, this is it. I would really recomend this book.

This book is a page turner and full of interesting information. I was ready to recommend this book to everybody, until I got to the chapters on cleansing - then the book turned into an "info-mercial" for Dr. Jeffery Bland's products. As far as I'm concerned, skip the chapters having to do with cleansing and read the rest.

This is a none-scientific book. It is based on hocus pocus ideas. I threw it away as soon as I got it. I wouldn't even give it to my friends.

This is a valuable addition to Wendell Berry's collections of essays for two primary reasons: (1) it documents a number of his pieces first delivered in speeches, whereas most of his earlier collections that centered on farming and local culture began in print, and (2) it further develops ideas as they relate to trends and events of the 1990's, a decade during which a number of his essay-driven books were guided by themes other than agricultural practice. I have noticed a number of critics who mention that this book is "not a good place to start when reading Wendell Berry," but this, as well as most of the associated comments, leave me scratching my head and wondering if these folks have actually read this book. These folks also seem not to comprehend in the least the difference between an essay and a master's thesis replete with lots of footnotes. Berry is an essayist, and to apply the words "shrill" or "vague" to his pieces is obtuse to the point of absurdity. In particular, he is quite precise in his addressing of particular cases, such as his critique of "The Kentucky Cycle" and its readings in local and national culture, and he is also distinct in his proposals for solutions and remediations concerning the issues that he addresses, whether agricultural, natural, or societal. His discussions of traditions, communities, and economic practices are solidly based on observations of how people live and interact; it is no small irony that those who critique his "rose-colored view" of the past simply subscribe to a mythologized concept of "progress" (assumed with technology) and a condescension toward "small town life." "Another Turn of the Crank" -- certainly one of Berry's funniest titles and refreshingly sharp covers -- should be read with a clear mind and its quandaries and provocative jabs at many of the assumptions of contemporary practices, whether agricultural or literary, will enliven any reader's mind.

I'd never read Berry before, but as far as I can tell, this brief collection of six essays and lectures sticks to familiar territory. However, it's probably not the best entry point for people who are newcomers to his realm. There are two related problems with the book: one of presentation, and one of tone. The problem with presentation is that the pieces are so short that there's no room for specifics. So, while one might be more or less in accord with the broad strokes of Berry's vision, there's no detail to back it all up. The problem with tone is that from the very first page the reader feels like they are being lectured at. Of course, some of the pieces are lectures, but there's a certain condescension that runs throughout the book. It comes out when Berry uses certain words such as the three As of "appropriate", "authentic" and "adequate". When these are used ( as they often are), there he's obviously made some kind of value judgment, but the reader is never let in on it. The end result of the two flaws is that the reader feels like a hectoring argument is being made without any supporting logic -- which ultimately smacks of preaching to the choir.

Which is unfortunate, since I tend to agree with Berry on a lot of things (though not his anti-abortion stance). Small farms are good, agribusiness is bad, stewardship of the land is good, extraction industries are bad, treating the body as an organic whole is good, and things of that nature. Alas, he has a tendency of making sweeping assertions and accusations that are far too simplistic and shrill to be useful. Two examples from the first 15 pages will suffice to illustrate: "This is a world in which the cultures that preserve nature and rural life will simply be disallowed." and "Communists and capitalists are alike in their contempt for country people, country life, and country places."

Berry also succumbs to the trick of creating straw men to counter his theses. For example, in one essay, he claims that conservationists are people who want to simply preserve land in a pristine, untouched state, and that's all. While there are certainly some conservationists who feel that way, they are a small minority of a a much larger community who actually is in almost total accord with Berry's views on stewardship and land use. It certainly doesn't help matters that his view of small-scale farming appears to be heavily tinted with rose-colored glasses. His claims that modern agribusinesses has rendered the small farm economically unviable sounds like a reasonable proposition. However, it ignores the fact that, historically, small scale farming ran on the thinnest of margins, was subject to all kind of external instability (weather, vermin, etc.), and operated on only slightly better than a subsistence level. In farming, cash is scarce, that's why people abandoned it in droves whenever the opportunity presented itself, such as in WWII, when all those defense-industry factories were opened in California. (Of course, in Berry's vision, you don't really need cash, because you barter for everything you need from your neighbors.)

Berry's exhortations to create small-scale communities is worthy stuff, and even in cities people are creating this. The growth of CSAs, farmers markets, and the like in the past decade is a tangible indicator of this. However, to achieve the large scale results Berry seeks requires a more rigorous roadmap than what is provided in this slim collection.

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

Another Turn of the Crank by Wendell Berry should *not* be the first Berry book one reads.

Wendell Berry seems to attract two kinds of readers. One group of readers consists of the fanatical true-believers. They eagerly snap up every word he writes. One suspects that their objectivity has been washed away by their enthusiasm.

The second group of readers are those who have just stumbled across some portion of Berry's work in the course of their meandering. They have yet to form an opinion. This review is written for the second group.

Wendell Berry, as an essayist, has the ability to slice through the passivity that cocoons the modern reader. His essays challenge them to exercise their mind and to examine their value system. Berry is not an easy read, he does not mollycoddle the reader with short simple sentences. The complex sentence structure is not the result of whim or laziness. Rather, it is core to Berry's mode of writing. The image that springs to mind the exercise in logic that requires the student to sort through a box of marbles with a balance-beam scale to find the marble(s) that are different. Expect to work when you read a Wendell Berry essay.

Another Turn of the Crank, specifically, is a depressing book. Berry writes in the Foreword "The proper role of government is to protect its citizens and its communities against conquest - against economic conquest just as much as conquest by overt violence." The majority of the remaining 100 pages are devoted to showing how the government failed (short synopsis: Policy supports industrial farming/forestry. Industrial farming is a commodity-extraction process. Commodity extraction does not create much wealth but is efficient for *concentrating* wealth. Wealth concentration is a zero-sum game. Weath is concentrated at the expense of others. Consequently, industrial farming causes widespread impoverishment.) and why the government failed (short synopsis: Farmers are no longer electorially significant but the cash contributions of industrial farming are.) to fill their proper role. The book projects the anguish one would expect of a general who learned that the diplomats traded away the battlefield his troops bought with blood.

Another Turn of the Crank should not be the first Wendell Berry book that they read because of it's one-dimensionality. New readers of Berry will be better served to start with The Gift of Good Land, or What are People For? These collections of essays are Wendell Berry samplers. They give the reader a much better feel for the range of Wendell Berry's ability to savor the human condition and his ability to project that experience through the written word.

Wendell Berry is a Kentucky farmer--a "country person" (p. 46), and a former English professor. He is also among my favorite poets. I arrived at this collection of six inspired essays through Berry's poetry. He is no ordinary country farmer, and this is no ordinary book of essays.

These are not easy essays. They often raise more questions than answers. But reading them is rewarding. Poet Ezra Pound wrote, "Learn of the green world what can be thy place." For Berry, "thy place" means "good stewardship" (p. 57), which is the theme of his book. He insightfully examines farm reform, food quality, nature conservation, caring for local communities, and finding redemption in "a fallen world" (p. 102) that is controlled by "distant," "supranational" corporations. "I am a Luddite," Berry proudly proclaims, "not 'against technology' so much as I am for community" (p. 90). For Berry, "human beings, let alone human societies, cannot live indefinitely by poison and fire" (p. 47).

Berry begins his book with a memorable quotation from R. S. Thomas: "What to do? Stay green/ Never mind the machine,/ Whose fuel is human souls,/ Live large, man, and dream small." He ends his book with, for me, the two most memorable essays in the collection: "The Conservation of Nature and the Preservation of Humanity" and "Health is Membership."

With a "turn of the crank," Berry hopes to bring his reader to a starting place to care for the world. But the point of the plucked chicken on the book's cover eludes me still.

G. Merritt

Once again, Berry has produced a work worth reading over and over again. By far one of his best collections of essays, I found myself warmed and heartened by his words and was impressed by how well he expresses the compatibility of good human work with nature, as they are often seen as opposing forces. He shows us how the best of our cultural traditions can bring a better life to all of us. His writings simply get better and better. If you've never read anything by Berry before, this could be a great one to start with. I also highly recommend another book of his, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. I will treasure this book for years to come.

This is the first Wendell Berry book I've read. I was vastly disappointed after reading some much praise for his works. Much of his work is overly flowery and long-winded.

There are a few gems this collection of essays: "A Native Hill" and "The Whole Horse" come to mind. These few essays stick to what Berry knows through experience. They reflect a deep connection the land and suggest a transcendental theme ala Thoreau.

Other essays focus on Berry's attempt to justify and explain the 'agrarian ethic'. Berry suggests that returning to locally based economies will restore a connection to the land. Having a connection to the land will result in people no longer destroying the earth.

While I agree strongly that this is the case, Berry does a terrible job of convincing anyone but religious and environmental zealots. The essays are filled with Biblical references and strange interpretations of obscure literature. He leaves much to be desired. Only rarely does Berry refer to anything practical or in the real world.

Berry's ideas are largely untested, untried and Utopian. He admits as much. Too often Berry refers to things as infinite and unknowable. This is a dangerous course. In attempting to discribe the ideal life Berry fails to point out the one thing that could bring down the house of cards Globalization is built on: local economics. Indeed for all his talk of human economy (running the household and community), he ignores the more standard meaning of the word.

Berry holds no punches in telling about sustainable living, holding traditions of old and how the way we're developing and farming this world can't last. Most of the essays were written 30 years ago or so, but Berry was way ahead of his time and a lot of his thoughts. This collection is especially important now as we've become "exploiters" of the land. These essays will inspire you to become a "nurturer" of the land.

For me the central theme of this book can be illustrated in this quote. " I don't think it is appreciated how much of an outdoor book the Bible is." Berry is a deeply religious man who lives his religion every moment in his deep, deep connections to the land, to all animals, to community,to the growing of food, and to the world as an organic entity.

As wonderful as it is to have Poet Laureates, I wish we also had Philosopher Laureates and that Wendell Berry had that forum. His thoughts are important for the national consciousness.

"The other kind of freedom is the freedom to take care of ourselves and of each other. The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life."

Berry advocates watching government closely, nationally but particularly locally. When it comes time to protest, he calls for facts and good arguments, not just slogans and buttons.
"I would rather go before the governement with two people who have a competent understanding of an issue, and who therefore deserve a hearing, than with two thousand who are vaguely dissatisfied."

These essays span several decades but the ideas are more relevant today than when they were written. The trends and programs, such as GATT and the loss of topsoil and the rise of megafarms, are as bad as he feared but time has proven them even more destructive.

"Restraint - for us, now - above all:the ability to accept and live within limits; to resist changes that are merely novel or fashionable; to resist greed and pride; to resist the temptation to 'solve' problems by ignoring them, accepting them as 'tradeoffs', or bequesthing them to posterity. A good solution, then, must be in harmony with good character, cultural value, and moral law."

While I agree with a lot of what Berry has to say, I found his approach off-putting, in a way that I think will ruin his message for many readers.

Berry supports a simpler lifestyle, and his ideas are much like Thoreau's as described during his experience in "Walden". He says that simplifying will bring us back to nature and a healthier way of living. I agree with many aspects of what he has to say, although I quibble with him on several points - but that's a matter of personal opinion and not a problem with the book. But Berry takes a fairly hard-nosed, holier-than-thou approach to explaining the virtues of the lifestyle he supports, and this grows tiresome after reading the book for more than a short while.

Berry is also very long-winded. His writing style is somewhat overblown and very difficult to get through. This book and perhaps this author are probably best read in small doses, whether you like him or not.

Sometimes, during and after reading a particular book, I feel as though I could not have read anything more appropriate at that time.

The book blows me away with its depth, its insight, or the amazing questions it raises.

The Art of the Commonplace is one of those books, and it may be the best introduction to Wendell Berry a reader can ask for. As a collection of essays over more than twenty years, it covers a wide range of social issues-such as agriculture and the environment, family and marriage, consumerism, and globalism-which is amazing given that all of them relate to agrarian topics.

Berry poses questions that most of us never consider, and I believe that is the main reason Berry is one of the most desperately needed Christian writers in today's America.

this book failed to clearly convey to the reader any sense of objectivity. dont read this book.

The Gift of Good Land is a wonderful thought provoking collection of essays about ancient and modern small scale agriculture and the ecological advantages of diversified small scale farming over the large scale industrial monoculture that prevails in the present day.

Writer and farmer Wendell Berry is known for his clarity and wisdom. This collection from 1982 is not a hiccough in that summation. However, this particular book may be slightly less accessible to general readers in that the emphasis is more on the "Agri" than the "Cultural." Though in his mind there is no such silly bifurcation. The first part contains essays about his visits to farms in Peru and the American Southwest, as well as an essay about the native grasses of his home state of Kentucky. From there the topics range from the pleasures and practicalities of using actual horsepower on farms to protesting against a nuclear reactor all the way to the essay from which the book draws its name. That essay alone (a theological study of land stewardship) is worth the price of the book.
All in all, these are excellent essays, but as many of them were drawn from farming journals, may find less of an audience. However, that should not stop anyone, suburbanite nor city dweller, from reading this fine, fine collection. "To see and respect what is there is the first duty of stewardship." --from "The Native Grasses and What They Mean."

I am not a farmer, nor do not live in an agricultural landscape. However, the degredation of the rural way of life and the depredations of corporate agriculture on it have long been an interest of mine.

This series of essays goes a long way towards describing how agriculture and rural life in general could be made sustainable. Today's 'modern' agriculture is decidedly not sustainable.

The book suffers a little for the passage of time. Some of the essays that I'm sure were topical in 1979 seem a little dated as far as content is concerned. Berry's lyrical writing rescues them, however.

If you have any interest in the food you eat and how it is produced, you should read this book (then join a Community Supported Agriculture farm).

The Gift of Good Land is a collection of 24 essays that were originally written for magazines. The original venue means that the essays are quite readable in terms of sentence length and punctuation. These essays cover a wide range of topics.

The glue that holds these essays together is Wendell Berry's love and concern for 'good' farming. To Berry's way of thinking, good farmers mimic natural ecosystems. That is, they cultivate a diversity of crops, both plant and animal. The diversity is not random but rather it is a patchwork quilt that is lovingly matched to the idiosyncrasies of the land. The Gift of Good Land focuses on people and cultures that have somehow managed to remain good farmers in spite of economic pressures. Ironically, many of these cultures exist in brittle climates. Hostile environments kill stupid economics just as quickly as it kills stupid people.

The thing I liked best about The Gift of Good Land is that Wendell Berry genuinely LIKES the people he interviews! He treats them gently, with dignity and respect. Many authors would see Berry's people as "subjects" that are stupidly struggling to maintain the basest existence. Berry sees them as people who are heirs to thousands of years of cultural evolution, living lives that are a heroic testament to human adaptability. I prefer to see through Berry's eyes.

Attached are a few of Berry's observations that I think are particularly acute:

(In Europe)"...'marginal' farms and their farmers are looked upon as vital resources that will be needed in times of crisis, and so policies have been evolved to keep them productive."

(In the Peruvian Andes) "I wanted to see ancient American agriculture that has been carried on continuously for...4500 years... (on) steep, rocky, and otherwise 'marginal' land." "What seemed so alluring and charmed then, and seems so hard to recover now, is a live sense of contrasting scales. The scale of that landscape is immense....This way of farming that has obviously had to proceed by small considerations. It has had to consider dirt by the handful. Every seed and stem and stone has been subjected to the consideration of touch - picked up, weighed in the hand, and laid down."

(In the Sonoran Desert) "In response to their meager (arable) land, the Papago developed a culture that was one of the grand human achievements. It was intricately respectful of the means of life, surpassingly careful of all the possibilities of survival."

(In the Mid-West) "A bad solution is bad, then, because it acts destructively upon the larger patterns in which it is contained."

(At home) "One of the ideas most ruinous to the small farm has been that the farmer "could not afford" to produce his own food....What is your time worth? Though often asked, I do not think this question is answerable. It is the same as asking what your life is worth."

(On children) "...parenthood is not an exact science, but a vexed privilege and a blessed trial, absolutely necessary and not altogether possible."

(In West Virginia from the seat of a bulldozer) "...it is virtually impossible to see what you're doing..... He (the person being interviewed) still seems a little awed to think that so large a machine has to be run so much by guess." And that is a fine metaphor for life.

Consider buying this book if this kind of writing appeals to you. Otherwise, save your money.