The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "HISTORY IS GOVERNED BY THOSE OVERARCHING MOVEMENTS that give shape and meaning to life by relating the human venture to the larger destinies of the..." (more)
Key Phrases: natural life systems, larger earth community, emergent universe, North American, South America, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The future can exist only if humans understand how to commune with the natural world rather than exploit it, explains author and renowned ecologist Thomas Berry (The Dream of the Earth, The Universe Story). "Already the planet is so damaged and the future is so challenged by its rising human population that the terms of survival will be severe beyond anything we have known in the past."

This may make him sound like a scolding, doomsday prophet, but Berry is an optimistic soul, hopeful that humans will rise to the challenge of cherishing the natural world in the third millennium. "Our future destiny rests even more decisively on our capacity for intimacy in our human-Earth relations." Berry predicts. From this premise, Berry reveals why we need to adore our blessed planet, while also examining why we are culturally driven toward exploiting nature. Because Berry has a science background as well as a spiritual orientation (he is the founder of the History of Religions Program at Fordham University), he brings a balanced and fresh voice to social ecology. Even though he writes for the masses, Berry is by no means a lightweight--chapters include "Ecological Geography," "The Extractive Economy," "The Corporation Story," and "Reinventing the Human." --Gail Hudson

Review

"Great Work indeed! Thomas Berry offers us the benefit of a lifetime of clear-headed, clear-hearted reflection. And by so doing he shows us where our task lies, shows us the particular test that we must face just as our ancestors faced their own great challenges. It's a work to stir the blood."        
--Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

"As we close out this century, Thomas Berry has demonstrated once again that he is one of the few great religious minds to be reckoned with."--Wes Jackson, president of the Land Institute

"Thomas Berry is the bard of the new cosmology. He unerringly finds the mythic dimension and the moral significance behind the scientific facts."        
--Theodore Roszak, author of The Voice of the Earth and Ecopsychology -- Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harmony; 1 edition (November 16, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609605259
• ISBN-13: 978-0609605257
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #429,201 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

83 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The Great Work"--a great book!, May 4, 2000

By	G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Thoreau. Muir. Leopold. Today I am adding Thomas Berry to this list. He will be remembered as the spokesman for our planet as we entered the new millennium. In this book, Berry insightfully writes, "without the soaring birds, the great forests, the sounds and coloration of the insects, the free-flowing streams, the flowering fields, the sight of the clouds by day and the stars at night, we become impoverished in all that makes us human" (p. 20).

"The Great Work" is a collection of 17 deep-ecology essays followed by a comprehensive, 32-page bibliography of "source materials." In his essays (which address, among other things, the environment, economics, politics, and education), Berry encourages us to reflect upon our human role amidst the "wonder" (p. ix) and "magic" (p. 20) of the Earth, "the garden planet of the universe" (p. ix), and move with great effort from our "devastating exploitation" of the planet to a more "benign presence" (p. 7). In one essay, "The Earth Story" (Chapter 3), Berry examines our integral human role on the 4.6-billion-year-old, "radiant blue-white, . . . privileged" planet Earth (pp. 21-22) that hangs in a 14.6-billion-year-old universe. In each essay, Berry encourages us to reexamine our relationship with the Earth--"to dream again"(p. 47), because we are now living in a "moment of grace" (p. 196) as we move into the twenty-first century, which enables us to "be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner" (p. 3). Reading this book could change the way you live your life.

G. Merritt

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The last Great Work , maybe., January 31, 2001

By	"im-p2dd" (St. Louis, MO.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (Paperback)

This may be the great summary work of Thomas Berry. It is historically up to date, as befits a great historian of religion, science and the Earth. The assessment of the present is realistic to any who appreciate what we have lost. He projects into the future from the past as far as can be seen and hoped. That is a very long distance indeed on both ends. The next stage is dependent on human choice to a large extent. The assessment of where we are and what we have done/accomplished is rather grim and realistic from a geophysical standpoint but is hopefull in its projections for Earth going forward, according to Thomas. Thank you, Thomas Berry, for this perhaps last published summary work.

41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the two or three most important works I've read, January 7, 2003

By	Mike Meyer "bspritzer" (Gilroy, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (Paperback)

Most people who love the Earth and fear its demise will relate to and devour this book. You may labor at times, but the fruit is abundant. You'll understand more clearly the deep causes in our cultural evolution that have put the Earth at risk. The solution is an immense undertaking, but Berry reminds us there's hope, and that we aren't alone. The human community, and more importantly, the larger life/Earth/Universe community, is available and at work, in us. How can it not be, when it was those communities from which we came? The developing universe, as Berry writes. When you adequately understand the causes of the problems, when you can identify them both outside and within, you move in a better direction. Berry provides an un-numbered, un-listed direction, one that is heard with more than the rational mind. Yet, he articulates better than I could have imagined. He gives an immense hope and guides toward that most important of all energies at this time, the psychic energy necessary for confronting and walking forward, for preparing oneself for real action, real work. That is a big thing. If you have wrung your hands at the seeming impossibility of correcting the wrongs done to the Earth, read this book. Berry doesn't give you concrete things to do, his words work into your creative area, your reflective mind, your spirit.
The folks who reacted negatively in review of this book missed the point or had other expectations. They almost kept me from purchasing The Great Work. I'm glad I bought it. It's one of the two or three most important works I've read.