Reforming the Southern Man
I am not from where I live, yet I have a deep fear that where I live won’t be where I live for very much longer. The god of progress bears down on our town… »
Jayber Crow
Not long after I moved my family to Bangkok, Thailand — where we lived for three years — I happened to be walking through a park with an environmental specialist for the U.S. Department of… »
The Bard of Kentucky
A review of Wendell Berry: Port William Novels and Stories (Library of America, 2018), Jack Shoemaker, ed. The long shelf of fiction by Wendell Berry—overshadowed by the colossal green canopy of his poetry and agrarian… »
Taking Root
A review of Taking Root: The Nature Writing of William and Adam Summer of Pomaria by James Kibler (editor) and Wendell Berry (Foreword) (University of South Carolina Press, 2017). Perhaps land is more important to… »
What Are People For?
A review of What Are People For? by Wendell Berry (North Point Press, 1990) “We should love life,” Dostoyevski once said, “more than the idea of life.” It is this concreteness, this rootedness, that seemingly… »
Wendell Berry: More Than a Southern Thoreau
It was pure brag on young Henry Thoreau’s part to say that he had gone to Walden Pond in order “to front only the essential facts of life,” to take a Spartanlike stance against its… »
Pope Francis and the Southern Tradition
Recent attempts made by the left and the right to make Pope Francis one of “their” own has sparked considerable debate among the political class and their voices in the mainstream media. Pope Francis’s speech before… »
Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XVI
Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals can believe them. –Orwell I believe you love me—God knows why? –Yates Snowden Even if the GOP can’t see the light they can feel the heat. “We’ve… »
