Skip to main content

The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry

The book's earnest environmental message resonated with me, and I share the author's sincere concern about our nation losing the "glue" of agricultural and village life (something which bonded us as a nation for centuries, but is now long gone after decades of urbanization, centralization, regulation and sociocultural atomization). 

At the same time I was concerned with a lack of rigor in the book, both in the case of various unsubstantiated and/or incorrect facts and statistics in this book [an example: "It is estimated that it now costs (by erosion) two bushels of Iowa topsoil to grow one bushel of corn" something that if true would suggest that by 2020 there would be no topsoil left in the entire state], as well as the general Malthusian lens the author uses to perceive reality. 

The embarrassing thing about Malthusianism: at some point the author has to look at the scoreboard and admit his predictions of doom never happened. You can't always just push things out into the future and excuse being wrong by claiming, "I'm still right, I'm just a little early. We're still doomed, just wait!" By that logic Thomas Malthus himself would be "not wrong, just early" in calling for horrendous famines and widespread starvation in late 18th Century England (which never happened, not even close). 

Even a book as sincere and earnest as this one has to be held to some standard of rigor and logic, otherwise we give away ammunition to an anti-environmentalist opposition, who can point out the unwarranted statistics and the garden-variety Malthusianism and declare an easy victory.

More Posts

Perpetuity by Kevin Joseph [new fiction release]

A fast-moving, speculative sci-fi thriller, and a fun read!  After helping a fellow runner who cut her foot on a nail, a young doctor inadvertently discovers a dangerous secret in her blood, a secret that puts them in direct conflict with shadowy forces in the biotech industry. Suddenly, they find themselves running for their lives, threatened by the US government... and even more powerful enemies. Perpetuity uses several character perspectives, and the reader gradually pieces together the book's reality through various characters' eyes. I appreciate any novel that is well-structured to the point that the reader doesn't actually "see" the structure, but can just enjoy the story as it unfolds. It's harder to do than it looks. The author has a tight, noirish writing style and a knack for capturing archetypal characters. Two examples: you'll meet a smarmy, arriviste tech CEO rendered perfectly, right down to the condescending internal monologue running in hi...

The Wars of America (Vol 1) by Robert Leckie

This is a massive and capably-written history, the first of two volumes. It will fill in a lot of the cracks in any reader's historical knowledge of the USA--especially if you're like me, someone whose historical knowledge has more cracks than foundation. Recommended as either a starting point to learn about each conflict, or as a finishing point to groove and firm up what you already know. Before I get to the book itself, let me share a brief thought on the absolute necessity of reading history--but specifically, reading history from historians who lived outside your own time period.  Current history writing is subject to a variety of problems, starting with the historians themselves, who are necessarily products of the time in which they live. They hold their era's consensus narratives, and they'll have no choice but to filter their views through modernity. The modern publishing industry adds yet another layer of problems: it acts as a gatekeeping institution, both di...

The Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner

This short and humble book will be priceless to an open-minded reader.  It discusses how to cultivate present-moment awareness, how to focus on process rather than product, how to make haste slowly, and many other practices that are increasingly indispensable in our haste-filled, results-oriented modern era. Several years ago I heard an unforgettable story from the owner of a language school in Santiago, Chile. She told me about a disgruntled customer who had been taking Spanish classes for weeks, but wasn't getting any better. This student complained, loudly, "I paid my money. Where is my Spanish?" This story stuck with me for well over a decade because it's a metaphor for how people confuse buying something with learning something, confuse "taking a class" with actually learning a domain and developing a sincere practice of that domain. We've productized so much of life in the modern era that people think they can buy language fluency off the shelf, li...