Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry has never been afraid to speak up for the dispossessed. The Need to Be Whole continues the work he began in The Hidden Wound (1970) and The Unsettling of America (1977), demanding a careful exploration of this hard, shared truth: The wealth of the mighty few governing this nation has been built on the unpaid labor of others. Without historical understanding of this practice of dispossession-the displacement of Native peoples, the destruction...

Thirteen new stories of the Port William membership spanning the decades from World War II to the present moment. For those readers of his poetry and inspired by his increasingly vital work as advocate for rational land use and the right-size life, these stories of Wendell Berry's offer entry into the fictional place of value and beauty that is Port William, Kentucky. Berry has said it's taken a lifetime for him to learn to write like an old man,...

Join us for an hour of stirring and straightforward wisdom from one of the most highly respected of modern American writers and poets. Using words like "affection" and "satisfaction," "care" and "joy," Berry calls for a re-evaluation of the basic values and practices of our lives. He illustrates his ideas with glimpses of his own life and those of his Kentucky farm neighbors, and describes a future where we can learn to find love, wisdom and meaning...

The story of the community of Port William is one of the great works in American literature. This collection, the tenth volume in the series, is the perfect occasion to celebrate Berry's huge achievement. It feels as if the entire membership-all the Catletts, Burley Coulter, Elton Penn, the Rowanberrys, Laura Milby, the preacher's wife, Kate Helen Branch, Andy's dog, Mike-nearly everyone returns with a story or two, to fill in the gaps in this long...

In the latest installment in Wendell Berry's long story about the citizens of Port William, Hannah Coulter sorts through her memories. Her first husband, Virgil, was declared "missing in action" shortly after the Battle of the Bulge; and after she married Nathan Coulter, about all he could tell Hannah about the Battle of Okinawa was "Ignorant boys, killing each other." The community was stunned and diminished by the war, with some of its sons lost...

"From the simple setting of his own barbershop, Jayber Crow -- orphan, seminarian, and native of Port William -- recalls his life and the life of his community as it spends itself in the middle of the twentieth century. Surrounded by his friends and neighbors, he is both participant and witness as the community attempts to transcend its own decline. And meanwhile, Jayber learns the art of devotion and that a faithful love is its own reward."--Container....

The rhythms of this novel are the rhythms of the land. A Place on Earth resonates with variations played on themes of change; looping transitions from war into peace, winter into spring, browning flood destruction into greening fields, absence into presence, lost into found.

It is 1976 and Andy Catlett, farmer and agricultural journalist, is walking the streets of San Francisco at dawn. In the eight months since losing his right hand to a corn-picking machine, he has also lost himself. Two thousand miles from his home in Kentucky, he begins to remember people, the land, and the comfort of knowing his place intimately. Andy's reveries evoke a membership governed by the principles of humanity and love. Inspiring and eye-opening,...

Berry opens this latest installment of the Port William series with young Andy Catlett preparing to visit a place he'd been to many times before, though this would be an adventure he will take very seriously. Nine years old, Andy embarks on the trip by bus, alone for the first time. He decides it will be a rite of passage and his first step into manhood. Sometimes a handful at home, Andy was a good boy when visiting his Grandparents' houses, and he...