Review of “The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry”

Published recently in The American Conservative. The book contains essays by such writers as Allan Carlson, Patrick Deneen, Jason Peters, Caleb Stegall, Rod Dreher, and D. G. Hart. Readers of FPR will find much to appreciate. Of course, this might seem like a bit of shameless self-promotion since I’m one of the co-editors, and perhaps that’s true. Nevertheless, there are some very thoughtful essays including an open letter from Berry’s teacher, Wallace Stegner, and a gem by Dante translator Anthony Esolen titled “If Dante Were a Kentucky Barber.”

Here’s the Table of Contents:

Introduction
Chapter 1: Wendell Berry, a Placed Person by Wallace Stegner
Chapter 2: Marriage in the Membership by Anne Husted Burleigh
Chapter 3: Not Safe, nor Private, nor Free: Wendell Berry on Sexual Love and Procreation by Allan Carlson
Chapter 4: An Education for Membership: Wendell Berry on Schools and Communities by Richard Gamble
Chapter 5: And for This Food, We Give Thanks by Matt Bonzo
Chapter 6: The Third Landscape: Wendell Berry and American Conservation by Jason Peters
Chapter 7: Wendell Berry and Democratic Self-Governance by Patrick J. Deneen
Chapter 8: First They Came for the Horses: Wendell Berry and a Technology of Wholeness by Caleb Stegall
Chapter 9: Living Peace in the Shadow of War: Wendell Berry’s Dogged Pacifism by Michael Stevens
Chapter 10: Wendell Berry’s Unlikely Case for Conservative Christianity by D. G. Hart
Chapter 11: The Rediscovery of Oikonomia by Mark Shiffman
Chapter 12: Wendell Berry’s Defense of a Truly Free Market by Mark T. Mitchell
Chapter 13: The Restoration of Propriety: Wendell Berry and the British Distributists by William Edmund Fahey
Chapter 14: The Integral Imagination of Wendell Berry by Nathan Schlueter
Chapter 15:Earth and Flesh Sing Together: The Place of Wendell Berry’s Poetry in His Vision of the Human by Luke Schlueter
Chapter 16: If Dante Were a Kentucky Barber by Anthony Esolen
Chapter 17: A Latter-Day St. Benedict by Rod Dreher