It is his profound understanding of self, place, and personal responsibility that has established Berry’s essential greatness as a writer, poet, philosopher, naturalist, and neighbor ... The World-Ending Fire...could not have come at a better time as our nation thrashes about in search of a voice of reason ... the collection...rhapsodizes in a kind of orchestral composition of rhetorical movements—from ethos to pathos to logos and back again ... Berry is at his best when in motion, poetically punctuating his romp through the landscape with delicious descriptions of the flowering bluebells and stately sycamores ... But this pulsating joy of his, living next to nature, is always tempered by his robust disgust and awareness of the ominous 'perhaps fatal' effect of one’s 'presumptuousness in living in a place by the imposition on it of one’s ideas and wishes' ... The World-Ending Fire ought to be required reading...Wendell Berry is our National Guardian Angel!
Berry is not the type of chipper environmentalist who believes that capitalism can persist unabated as long as we install more solar panels. Nor is he the type of cerebral climate catastrophist who considers all action futile ... On the whole, this political ambivalence works to Berry’s advantage, allowing him a kind of broad appeal that few anti-capitalists or conservationists enjoy ... At times it is frustrating that political categories and ideologies as such rarely figure into his work, though he examines their effects. Wary of large-scale solutions and 'government planning,' in World-Ending Fire, Berry repeatedly rails against 'bureaucrats' ... But Berry reminds us that to take small solutions off the table is also a kind of giving up ... It is important—no matter what is going on at a macro level—to be kind to your family, your neighbors and the land.
Berry is the philosopher and the prophet of agriculture, community, stability, and friendship, and there is nothing sentimental or utopian anywhere in his advocacy of those things. Rather, he is humbly empirical ... He is precise about America’s great delusions ... There is much more, all, yes, essential.
Berry’s essays roam widely ... But the majority of them return, out of a kind of disgust, to the idea of betrayal, and the way in which the U.S. farming industry has abandoned its responsibility to the terrain it has been cultivating for the last century and a half. The startling aspect of this charge sheet is its proxy villain, which is neither the cereal companies nor the burger chains but the American dream ... Berry’s agrarian arguments are persuasive ... If there is an argument against Berry’s icy anti-corporatism it is simultaneously practical—what works well in Kentucky may not solve the food problems of an overpopulated planet—and philosophical. It’s all very well railing against consumer materialism, but, as Orwell once pointed out in a slightly different context, consumer materialism is about all the western world’s poorer classes have got left ... perhaps Berry will have the last laugh. Whether by that stage in human evolution it will be worth having is another matter.
...a fascinating tribute to the life of the land ... Punctuated by intimate observations of the natural world, these essays encourage us to see the immeasurable value of the land. Today, Berry’s writings are timelier than ever.
A pleasing selection of essays from the lifelong farmer and award-winning writer ... A great place to start for those who are not familiar with Berry’s work; for those who are, it will be a nostalgic stroll down a rural, wooded Memory Lane. In this day and age, his writings are must-reads.
Berry’s graceful essays have long been models of eloquence, insight, and conviction ... Berry’s fans won’t find anything new, but newcomers will find the works exceptionally timely, and the book as a whole a thoughtful introduction to Berry’s writing.
