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James Howard Kunstler

World Made by Hand: A Novel Paperback – January 1, 2009

by James Howard Kunstler (Author)

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Book 1 of 4: The World Made by Hand Novels

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In The Long Emergency celebrated social commentator James Howard Kunstler explored how the terminal decline of oil production, combined with climate change, had the potential to put industrial civilization out of business. In World Made by Hand, an astonishing work of speculative fiction, Kunstler brings to life what America might be, a few decades hence, after these catastrophes converge. For the townspeople of Union Grove, New York, the future is nothing like they thought it would be. Transportation is slow and dangerous, so food is grown locally at great expense of time and energy, and the outside world is largely unknown. There may be a president, and he may be in Minneapolis now, but people aren’t sure. Their challenges play out in a dazzling, fully realized world of abandoned highways and empty houses, horses working the fields and rivers, no longer polluted, and replenished with fish. With the cost of oil skyrocketing—and with it the price of food—Kunstler’s extraordinary book, full of love and loss, violence and power, sex and drugs, depression and desperation, but also plenty of hope, is more relevant than ever.

Print length

317 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Grove Press
Publication date

January 1, 2009
Dimensions

5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

0802144012
ISBN-13

978-0802144010
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Far from a typical postapocalyptic novel. It caters neither to a pseudo-morbid nor faddishly slick vision of the future. Though grim with portent, it is ultimately, as Camus's novel The Plague, an impassioned and invigorating tale whose ultimate message is one of hope, not despair." -- Michael Leone

"Kunstler segues from his analysis of the possible effects of a decline in oil production on modern Industrial society to a full-blown, and artfully carried out, semidystopic dramatization of what small-town American life might be like in the wake of major terrorist bombings and industrial decline on U.S. soil.... But in the end, the beauty of Kunstler's brilliant cautionary fiction, aside from the charming narrative with its many convincing details of life after apocalypse, is that most readers will admit that Earle's world, the world made by hand ... sounds at least as unpredictably pleasing as our own." -- Alan Cheuse

"Kunstler's emotional understanding places the book well outside the confines of genre fiction." -- Eve Ottenberg

"Kunstler's storytelling talents are in evidence here.... Kunstler has punctuated the nightmarish scenario of his novel with ... poignant moments where hope and despair vie for dominance of the human spirit." -- Bharti Kirchner

"Superb ... an extraordinary, suspenseful, deeply affecting yarn that very successfully weaves together elements of science fiction, the Western, and even magical realism.... Read this book." -- Reihan Salam

"The verisimilitude of Kunstler's world leads me to think the future is Union Grove. Thirty years from now, it will be interesting to see if that little town seems excessively sad, richly luxurious, or spot on. But for now, I'm hedging my bets. Where I live, one block east of ground zero, I've started keeping a compost bin and am thinking about adding a micro wind generator. [Nearby] the Freedom Tower has just emerged above ground and may one day be full of Investment bankers. Recently, though, I've started looking at that plot through Kunstler's eyes. It gets good sunlight, and it occurs to me it would make a hell of a bean field." -- Paul Greenberg

"Unlike the bleakness of style and subject in Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Kunstler's World Made by Hand Is an end-of-days novel that is more a pleasure than a burden to read; it frightens without becoming ridiculously nightmarish, it cautions without being too judgmental, and it offers glimmers of hope we don't have to read between the lines to comprehend." -- Zak M. Salih

"What's after armageddon? No government, no laws, no infrastructure, no oil, no industry . . . and sometimes a sense of relief. In Kunstler's richly imagined World Made by Hand, the bone-weary denizens of Union Grove (with its echo of Our Town's Grover's Corners) cope with everything from mercenary thugs to religious extremists, yet manage to plant a few seeds of human decency that bear fruit." -- Cathleen Medwick

"Within the first few pages of James Howard Kunstler's poignant, provocatively convincing novel set in a future possibly as near as tomorrow, you find yourself musing: could this happen to me? By the end, you're wondering not could, but when?" -- Alan Weisman

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grove Press; 1st edition (January 1, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 317 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0802144012
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0802144010
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #124,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #358 in Environmentalism
- #599 in Nature Conservation
- #1,276 in Dystopian Fiction

Customer Reviews:
677 ratings

About the author

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James Howard Kunstler

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James Howard Kunstler is probably best known as the author of "The Long Emergency" (The Atlantic Monthly Press 2005), and "The Geography of Nowhere" (Simon and Schuster, 1993). Two other non-fiction titles in that series are "Home From Nowhere" (Simon and Schuster, 1996), and "The City in Mind" (Simon and Schuster, 2002). He's also the author of many novels, including his tale of the post-oil American future, "World Made By Hand" (The Atlantic Monthly press, 2008) and its three sequels. His shorter work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, Metropolis, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and many other periodicals.

James Howard Kunstler was born in New York City in 1948. He attended New York's High School of Music and art and SUNY Brockport (BA, Theater, 1971). He was a reporter for the Boston Phoenix, the Albany Knickerbocker News, and later an editor with Rolling Stone Magazine. In 1975 he dropped out of corporate journalism to write books, and settled in Saratoga Springs, New York. He now lives in nearby Washington County, N.Y., the setting of his "World Made By Hand" series.

Kunstler's popular blog, Clusterf**k Nation, is published every Monday morning at www.kunstler.com and his podcast, The KunstlerCast, is refreshed once per month.

Kunstler is also a serious professional painter. His work may be seen at www.kunstler.com

Find JHK on Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/JamesHowardKunstler

Customer reviews

5 star		61%
4 star		23%
3 star		10%
2 star		3%
1 star		4%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Sue K.

"Mantasy" makes this unreadable for a woke female

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2019

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I am a huge fan of post-apocalyptic visions that are complex and deep. But I am also a woman who happens to be very aware of how other women are portrayed in storylines, and this book is literally not written for me. Within the first 20 pages the only two female characters in the story are introduced as sex objects, one a teenager attached to a creepy older man and the other an older woman who is "shared" between two men who are having a bromance. Honestly, in this day and age? I'm fairly certain in the apocalypse the women who would survive would probably need to be more than just young women with tits and older women who are "still beautiful". What does that even mean? Beauty doesn't expire. But the fiction written by old men writing stories as if the world came to an end in 1750 most certainly should.

113 people found this helpful

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Sarah B

Excellent and enjoyable, with a few "mantasy" elements

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2017

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I really enjoy these slower, more relaxed dystopias that occupy the opposite end of the spectrum of bloodbaths like The Road. Station Eleven and even the Ember YA series (especially the third book), are other examples of dystopias that take as realistic as possible a view about how societies might work after government stops functioning, and when resources are scarce, and it's not always doom and gloom. In fact, World Made by Hand is as much utopia as dystopia.

Union Grove, NY is a small community struggling to survive in the aftermath of an economic collapse which catalyzed a government collapse, which made everyone vulnerable to flu and encephalitis that dramatically reduced the population. No electricity, no public works to maintain roads, no social safety net whatsoever. So in rural Union Grove, they farm as much as they can, and make everything by hand, hence the title. Kunstler is a surprisingly great fiction writer considering his nonfiction background--not just in terms of the prose, which a nonfiction writer must master anyhow, but in terms of the interesting plotting and the fascinating characters. Because of course several "interim" power structures crop up--some gangsterism, some graft, some religious zealots, and some ordinary townsfolk who would like to try and make everything fair. Kunstler throws all of these personalities in a town together, and we see what shakes out.

I was especially fascinated by the character of Jobe, the leader of the cultish religious sect that moves into town. Of course, you don't trust him, and fear that he's going to try and convert everybody, and he does a bit of this, but Jobe is a much more complex character than you'd expect, and Kunstler totally subverted my expectations of him.

My only complaint, and I always get down votes on Amazon when I mention this but bring it on, is the female characters. I'm sorry, I have to call "mantasy" when I see it. Of the four-ish female characters who have speaking lines, each one throws herself at the narrator at some point. Each female character is either desolate with grief, or in need of protection. It's unheard of in this "future" for women to live alone, for them to do anything other than domestic work. And they're all hungry for the narrator. Commence longest eye roll ever. Don't get me wrong--I can see certain parts of this prediction making sense--division of labor is one of the most important ways to hang together as a community, and the scarcer resources are (and it's hard to have babies here because of environmental contaminants), the more you want to protect your women. I get it. That DOESN'T mean that every woman would be content to sit back and make jam. That not a single woman would volunteer for the city council. That not a single woman would prefer to live alone (or, gasp, with another woman), and use her guns for protection, rather than taking up with a man twenty years older than she, and eventually showing up naked in his bed. That not a single woman would be an entrepreneur. COME ON! Kunstler's apparent lack of thought about women other than as sexual objects to be cosseted is alarming, because obviously as a writer who makes predictions for a living, this is what he really thinks about us.

Enjoyable read, if you can ignore all of that.

145 people found this helpful

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Hollis

Definitely one of my all-time favorites in the Genre.

Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2021

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I guess you would call this dystopian as it takes place in the U.S. after some type of conflict and disease and the aftermath. One of my favorite genres and this series (4 books) is my absolute favorite. All of the subsequent novels are really good too. I am generally not a lover of getting involved in a series as I find as the stories go on they seem to get weaker in so many cases. That is not true for this series. If anything it seems to get stronger. The last book was terrific. I plan on reading them again (another thing I rarely, if ever, do).

4 people found this helpful

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Jane C.

A little disappointing

Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2017

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It's decently well-written, but I felt almost as though the author has no enthusiasm for the end of the world genre. He seems to be more of a pioneer days fetishist. The story is mostly limited to one town, and the immediate surrounding area. The dates are vague, but it becomes a little clearer in the second book. Everything broke down shortly after 2009, and it's about nine or ten years later (an eleven year-old who was ten at the beginning of the first book can remember riding in a car seat). But except for depression and disappointment stemming from their loss of modern amenities, the characters act as though they stepped out of the 1800's. The. local musicians play weird music and people make their own cheese. Yet in a town located on a river, nobody can figure out how to generate a little bit of electricity? There also seems to be a disconnect between the size of the population and the availability of scavenged items. If everyone is still around, why can't some of the electrical infrastructure be rebuilt? If almost everybody is dead, why are they making their own shoes instead of scavenging? It's only been less than years! The author tells us almost nothing of what transpired in the decade since everything broke down. Going from "today" to a dystopian future is always tricky, and most authors find a way to cheat it a little. But here it's skipped entirely. The oddest missing piece is the question of where everyone went? There was a flu epidemic, and a meningitis outbreak, but did a lot of city people starve? Where is everyone? And if they are all dead, why don't the remaining people have access to their stuff? All this said, it's a good book, just not completely satisfying for someone looking for a something with more of an apocalyptic slant.

37 people found this helpful

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Robin T

Chilling and Charming

Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2021

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A somewhat harrowing peak into a possible near future but it feels honest and all too likely. The details are well considered and the characters are compelling.

2 people found this helpful

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Vernon Z. Jackubowski

A pleasurable, relaxing read

Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2020

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An apocalyptic novel that is different from most of this genre in that there’s no zombies or aliens. It’s about people trying to go on with life after the lights go out. The characters are genuine and understandable whether they are good or bad. Just a great read.

2 people found this helpful

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One Tax Mind

touching novel of a post-apocalyptic New York

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2022

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Beautifully written story of a little town trying to survive after atomic bombs dropped on Washington DC and LA sometime in our century. I look forward to Book Two.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Viva_Viv

Has great potential but I was disappointed

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 29, 2016

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Being a fan of speculative fiction, and having read some of his non-fiction, I thought I should check this out. I have mixed feelings.

It is quite interesting to see how a developed country might turn out after some sort of catastrophe that broke down the infrastructure, energy grid, etc. How would modern people react to such a thing? what cultures might develop? I think he brings in some interesting ideas for how different groups of people might band together and the ways they learn to get by, and how those groups interact with each other. There were some realistic things and some that I hadn't thought of that intrigued me. I enjoyed the start of the book.

However I found myself losing interest later on, there is an undercurrent of romanticising "old country ways" that made some things unrealistic to me. According to the timeline, the main character would have grown up in our times, and those tastes and experiences wouldn't evaporate with the loss of complex tech. Suddenly gender relations and taste in music and dance have gone back 100 yrs just because they don't have an electric grid. I don't doubt some old trends might be brought back out of necessity but I sense a bit of the author's fantasies coming through.

It ends with a mystery meant to make you want to get the next book to find out what happens, but I just found it a bit baffling and disjointed from the rest of the book.

I feel like there was so much potential here for a great book that could really bring to life a reasonably plausible scenario and make it interesting without resorting to gimmicks, but feel kinda let down. I will see what people think of the 2nd book and give it a try if I think it could improve on this but otherwise I won't waste my time.

2 people found this helpful

dr n f northcott

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 19, 2016

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enjoyable and thought provoking first book - interesting insight into a possible future!!

Anthony

Great storytelling.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 28, 2017

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