Home Economics

By Wendell Berry

Book Overview

"My work has been motivated," Wendell Berry has written, "by a desire to make myself responsibly at home in this world and in my native and chosen place." In Home Economics, a collection of fourteen essays, Berry explores this process and continues to discuss what it means to make oneself "responsibly at home." His title reminds us that the very root of economics is stewardship, household management. To paraphrase Confucius, a healthy planet is made up of healthy nations that are simply healthy communities sharing common ground, and communities are gatherings of households. A measure of the health of the planet is economics-the health of its households. Any process of destruction or healing must begin at home. Berry speaks of the necessary coherence of the "Great Economy," as he argues for clarity in our lives, our conceptions, and our communications. To live is not to pass time, but to spend time. Whether as critic or as champion, Wendell Berry offers careful insights into our personal and national situation in a prose that is ringing and clear.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0865472750
• ISBN13: 9780865472754
• Release Date: June 1987
• Publisher: North Point Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Still great!

I have been a fan of Wendell Berry since my undergraduate days. I own many of his collected essays, as they are worth returning to again and again. At his best, Berry is one of the most thoughtful and challenging writers in America today--whether writing literary criticism, social criticism, poetry, or fiction.This collection of essays is not Berry's very best. But Berry at his worst would still be worth reading (and I can't say that I've ever read anything by him that I could even call "moderately bad"). If you wish to go beneath the surfact events and problems in America to their root causes, Berry will take you there.

An Important Book by an Important Man

Mr. Berry, in engaging with the pressing issues and institutions of our day--from higher education to national security to gender relations to the perception of manual labor--introduces a new vocabulary for improving our country and our world. Instead of "progress" and "movement," Mr. Berry suggests "community" and "loyalty." These notions, and the overarching theme of commitment to place, inform all fourteen insightful essays. Mr. Berry is passionate and articulate, and his book will, at least, encourage debate, if not inspire real and lasting change in the way that Americans deal with their environment, their neighbors, and themselves.