Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Friday, February 10 if you spend $25 on items shipped by Amazon

Or fastest delivery Tuesday, February 7. Order within 14 hrs 5 mins

Only 9 left in stock (more on the way).

[{"displayPrice":"$16.95","priceAmount":16.95,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"16","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"95","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"Npy1prnmVzlKi9fjDCtO2PXxHVdu1jOcMBZ9DOeU%2Fpglp2ZUOjQBQD1nYl3VCFskrg2HDBd6TkmtI4sXAF8h7wBX%2B%2BJEYqvnfqYnRp8PQRxg2cBXMHR1J6BZ9LZJegx7F1S7QCvKEUA%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW"},{"displayPrice":"$10.10","priceAmount":10.10,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"10","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"10","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"2dmclcKk%2FjTWoCn%2B1x1JLvz5JbgSpd49REWMobxP9ZXnOzpQDO1QirNY6HSWuO2gJPiJmPjCyOkkVn%2Fr8Bols8gt0wx6JYVB4HqPxGMtZgnjAc4afAlLmVC6IQV8DgubBZIFz1Eon%2Fl1ukcWb5N%2BreRFML8n9gEEctnbbCPXUC88NjZJqp5Cbw%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED"}]

$$16.95 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Return policy: Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

FREE delivery February 10 - 17. Details

Or fastest delivery February 8 - 13. Details

Select delivery location

Used: Acceptable | Details

Sold by Wa Tacoma Goodwill Olympics Rainier Region

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$13.82
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: allnewbooks

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Follow the Author

Wendell Berry

The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural Paperback – May 1, 2009

by Wendell Berry (Author)

47 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$11.99

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$28.71

—

$24.74

Paperback

"Please retry"

$16.95

$12.58

$7.99

Kindle
$11.99 Read with Our Free App
Hardcover
$28.71

5 Used from $24.74 1 Collectible from $90.00
Paperback
$16.95

13 Used from $7.99 13 New from $12.58 2 Collectible from $45.00

Enhance your purchase

The essays in The Gift of Good Land are as true today as when they were first published in 1981; the problems addressed here are still true and the solutions no nearer to hand. The insistent theme of this book is the interdependence, the wholeness, the oneness of people, land, weather, animals, and family. To touch one is to tamper with them all. We live in one functioning organism whose separate parts are artificially isolated by our culture. Here, Berry develops the compelling argument that the “gift” of good land has strings attached. We have it only on loan and only for as long as we practice good stewardship.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Counterpoint
Publication date

May 1, 2009
Dimensions

4.9 x 0.9 x 8.01 inches
ISBN-10

1582434840
ISBN-13

978-1582434841
See all details

Frequently bought together

+
+

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Some of these items ship sooner than the others.

Show details Hide details

Choose items to buy together.

by Wendell Berry Paperback
$16.95
Only 9 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Get it as soon as Friday, Feb 10
by Wendell Berry Paperback
$14.95
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Get it as soon as Thursday, Feb 9
by Wendell Berry Paperback
$16.95
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Get it as soon as Thursday, Feb 9

Wendell Berry
377
Paperback
63 offers from $9.10
Wendell Berry
582
Paperback
14 offers from $8.10
Wendell Berry
194
Paperback
69 offers from $4.40
Wendell Berry
54
Paperback
11 offers from $17.71
Wendell Berry
25
Paperback
24 offers from $5.22
Wendell Berry
112
Paperback
56 offers from $2.30

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Counterpoint (May 1, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1582434840
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1582434841
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.9 x 0.9 x 8.01 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #154,368 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #187 in Nature Writing & Essays
- #481 in Literary Criticism & Theory
- #521 in Essays (Books)

Customer Reviews:
47 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Wendell Berry

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Wendell E. Berry (born August 5, 1934) is an American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. A prolific author, he has written many novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be ushered into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Guy Mendes (Guy Mendes) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5

47 global ratings

5 star		88%
4 star		8%
3 star		5%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Scot F. Martin

Emphasis on "Agricultural"

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 12, 2007

Verified Purchase

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."

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

intrepid2

From a non-farmer....GREAT read!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 11, 2015

Verified Purchase

Very interesting to the layperson (city type). Much to think about that was never considered. I have passed this around to several with similar comments. All found this very informative. There may not be anything "spectacular or noteworthy" to a farm type person, but was a real eye-opener to us. Highly recommended for those who know nothing about farming, just for general thoughts about what is done and should be done on a farm.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

MOgranny

The way things ought to be.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 20, 2014

Verified Purchase

Entertaining and thought provoking essays on sustainable agriculture and living close to the land. The life that was so common in our country until after WWII. Very worthwhile read.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Dakotah Cunningham

One of my favorites

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 11, 2014

Verified Purchase

I love Wendell Berry. This is a book I have on my shelf and have purchased several as gifts for others.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

windhover

Farming prophecy.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 14, 2015

Published over 30 years ago, I have just read these collected essays for the first time and they are a revelation. I read a book of Wendell Berry’s poetry back in the ‘70’s or 80’s and was impressed by his tone of reverence for the mysteries of soil and the life which springs from it. But I had long since decided that a landed life was not for me so I moved on to other writers. When people spoke of “love of the land” or “sense of place” I didn’t know what they were talking about and I didn’t know enough to care. Other than the ground my house sits on, my own patch of land measures roughly the size of 2 banquet tables. I have enjoyed my landless life and have no intention of giving it up now. But—I’d be a dim bulb indeed not to see, in the stewards of soil presented here, that I have been missing something.

The Gift of Good Land was written in tribute to the small-scale farmer because “small-scale agriculture is virtually synonymous with good agriculture”. Mr. Berry gives evidence of this principle by introducing us to about a dozen small farmers whose varied practices are intimately tied to the specific nature of their given piece of earth. The Peruvian who cultivates steep and rocky terrain on a mountainside high in the Andes uses a type of “hoe farming” that has sustained his family and their Inca forbears across centuries. The Amish continue to farm small holdings because their horse-drawn implements limit the acreage they are able to plant and harvest. And yet their farms remain abundant and profitable generation after generation.

In their small agriculture, these men and women come to know the unique habits of their land in ways that industrial farmers with their massive “acre eaters” never can. In any particular region, Berry tells us, there is a limit beyond which a farm outgrows the attention and affection of a single owner. Keenly aware of the living interplay between their own topography and the many acts of nature which condition it, the small farmers’ sense of place becomes ingrained. Because they know their land and love it, they learn to sense its needs and harvest potential acre by acre or even yard by yard. It responds to their mindful cultivation with a bounty that does not deplete the earth.

And for all that, there is virtually no public appreciation for the disciplines necessary to good farming. The good farmer, along with the bad, is “typically regarded as a drudge without learning, a hick without dignity.”

I didn’t buy this book from Amazon—I picked it up at a library bin sale. I’m taking time to write this review because I want other readers to know that, over 30 years later, the wisdom in these pages has not lost relevance and has, perhaps, gained in urgency. It would be hard to come up with a better companion piece to the Pope’s latest encyclical (the one about climate change). Wendell Berry is no Bible thumper. But that did not stop him from making his own case for the proper Christian approach to agriculture and the conservation of resources.

In the final chapter he advocates for an ethic that esteems perseverance in un-heroic tasks equally with the grand action. He wonders whether the work of real stewardship, like real prayer and real charity, must be done in secret. These are his concluding words: “To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of the Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.”

I think I need to read more Wendell Berry.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Wildlife Splash

READ THIS BOOK!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 15, 2015

Verified Purchase

Bloody brilliant!

Totally relevant; it was a real problem to put it down. I am so busy, but I set the clock for 04:45hrs to get a few sections in before the madness of the day started! It was a revelation, it made me question currently what I am doing; it has set in progress change for me and my dependents.

A manifesto that brings back sanity to farming sustainably, but also what is necessary for humanity to live sustainably on this non-renewable planet. It reminds you of the things that we have forgotten are important.

stuke

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 5, 2014

Verified Purchase

Great item, well packaged and swiftly sent. Thank you!!

See all reviews

Buy new: $16.95$16.95 FREE delivery: Friday, Feb 10 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy Used: $10.10

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural Paperback – May 1, 2009

Enhance your purchase

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Product details

Videos

About the author

Wendell Berry

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

$16.95

FREE delivery: Friday, Feb 10 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.

Ships from: Amazon.com

Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy Used:

$10.10