What Are People For?: Essays

by Wendell Berry

In the twenty-two essays collected here, Wendell Berry, whom "The Christian Science Monitor "called ""the "prophetic American voice of our day," conveys a deep concern for the American economic system and the gluttonous American consumer. Berry talks to the reader as one would talk to a next-door neighbor: never preachy, he comes across as someone offering sound advice. He speaks with sadness of the greedy consumption of this country's natural resources and the grim consequences Americans must face if current economic practices do not change drastically. In the end, these essays offer rays of hope in an otherwise bleak forecast of America's future. Berry's program presents convincing steps for America's agricultural and cultural survival.

• ISBN10: 0865474206
• ISBN13: 9780865474208
• Publish Date: 1 April 1990
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 8 October 2015
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: North Point Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 210
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

Take what I said about Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, rinse and repeat. There came a point where I had to stop making notes because I was writing down the whole book.

In amongst the essays on Hemingway, on Twain, on Edward Abbey are the essays on freedom, on marriage, on fulfillment, on all the ways the center cannot hold when we’re consumed by consuming. The former didn’t seem like a digression from the latter. They all spoke— passionately, provokingly, eminently responsibly— to the same crucial theme.

It dissatisfies me in the best way. It decries the culture that demands satisfaction should be our highest aim. I’d rather wrestle with these ideas than unconditionally agree with a dozen others.