Citizenship Papers: Essays [Paperback]

Wendell Berry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 18, 2004

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. Adams, Jefferson, and Madison would have found great clarity in his prose and great hope in his vision. And today’s readers will be moved and encouraged by his anger and his refusal to surrender in the face of desperate odds. Books get written for all sorts of reasons, and this book was written out of necessity. Citizenship Papers, a collection of 19 essays, is a ringing call of alarm to a nation standing on the brink of global catastrophe.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

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. So it always seems with Berry, one of English's finest stylists, as perspicuous as T. H. Huxley at his best and as perspicacious as John Ruskin at his. Like Huxley, Berry cares about how life persists; like Ruskin, about how economics and politics impinge upon life. Naturally, then, his constant subject is the fostering of life, especially human life--in a word, agriculture. As Huxley in "On a Piece of Chalk" (1865) shows how a little natural chalk implicates vast evolutionary processes, Berry in "Let the Farm Judge" shows how one facet of agriculture--sound sheep raising--implicates all of it. Like Ruskin, Berry descries more deeply than others the dangers major crises reveal; if Ruskin's "Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century" (1884) is the most penetrating critique of industrialism in his day (the storm cloud was air pollution), Berry's pieces on 9/11 and official reaction to it constitute the most powerful response to today's global industrialism. In those essays and throughout, Berry sees America persisting, as it has for a century, to choose industrialism over agrarianism. He hopefully counsels reversing that choice and, so doing, again embracing life and community. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"The time will soon come when we will not be able to remember the horrors of September 11 without remembering also the unquestioning technological and economic optimism that ended on that day." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (August 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159376037X
• ISBN-13: 978-1593760373
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #273,730 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Re-connect, March 16, 2004

By 

Patricia Kramer (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Citizenship Papers (Hardcover)

Wendell Berry throughout this book describes the real meaning of citizenship. Not citizenship of a country but citizenship of a place, a community, an ecosystem.

Berry writes that security comes from being self sufficient within that community. The fact that a breakdown in transportation in this country would leave grocery stores bare should give us all pause. How much more sense it would make to know the farms still exist locally to provide the food, to know the farmer through a Community Supported Agriculture arrangement, to not be dependent on food shipped across the country and even across the oceans.

The problem is current and past policies are driving small farmers out of business and local businesses are being driven out by megastores such as Walmart. But Berry points out we can resist being driven along this path and stand up and say no. Join a CSA, shop at the farmer's market, buy organic, support the local shops.

Wendell Berry says it better. "This, of course, is the description of an emergency. It is moreover an emergency of the worst kind:one that cannot be resolved by "emergency measures". It is an emergency that calls for patience, and to be patient in an emergency is a hard requirement. but patience is what we must have if we hope to complete our work.

Obviously, we must use the emergency measures that are available to us, thought there are not many. We must do what we can politically, thought our political power at present is not great. But we must remember that good work cannot have a merely political completion. Our work will not be completed in the world's capitals, but in healthful farms and forest, ecosystems and watersheds, and in coherent communities. More important even than political victory for our side is the necessity to keep our thinking sound enough and complex enough to deal effectively with actual problems and needs. We must not let either political urgency or our sense of peril reduce us to the proto-warfare of slogans and sound bites."

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read it with an open heart and consider ways we must change, October 12, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Citizenship Papers (Hardcover)

This man is wise and we need to listen to him. Even more, we need to think hard about what actions we can take to address the concerns raised here. For most of us, our actions will necessarily be considered "radical", for most of us have strayed far from living with a consideration for the health of the earth and the local communities we live in. I am frightened at the direction this nation is going and I hope and pray more people pay attention to what Bush and his crew are doing and kick him out next year. But that is only a small part of what needs to happen. Berry consistently gets to the hard roots of many of our modern crises and is always clear-headed and forceful in his analysis. An amazing writer and a master stylist. Read him now. Now is when we most need to hear him.

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book..., December 29, 2010

By 

M. Tomo (Arcata, ca) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Citizenship Papers: Essays (Paperback)

This book is full of a lofty wisdom that should common sense to any one that is truly concerned with the direction this country is taking. A must read on the road to self-sufficiency and sustainable food production....