| Book Review | Environmental History, 9.1

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 9.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Wendell Berry and the Agrarian Tradition: A Common Grace. By Kimberly A. Smith. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. 2003. x + 270 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $34.95.

The farmer and poet Wendell Berry has published more than thirty books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. He is one of our most influential and eloquent advocates for both the environment and subsistence agriculture and the family farm. Still, despite his importance, until Kimberly A. Smith's book, only one book-length study of Berry's work had appeared—Andrew Angyal's Wendell Berry (Twayne, 1995), a basic introduction to Berry's life and writing. Smith's book then is the first substantial critical analysis of Berry's thought to be published. Significantly, though, Smith aims her analysis at understanding the social and political relevance of Berry's ideas rather than coming to terms with his artistry and eloquence, considering Berry's novels and stories not principally as literature but as "elaborations of his social and moral theories" (p. 5). She describes her study as both "an attempt to introduce Wendell Berry's work to students of agriculture, social theory, moral philosophy, and political thought" and "an exploration of the problem of living a meaningful life in a world filled with both deadly perils and unimagined possibilities" (p. ix). Smith's goals are clearly ambitious, and she is generally successful in realizing them.

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