World Made by Hand: A Novel
 | Grove Press, 2009, Paperback Customer Rating: 103 reviews Recommend |
|---|
In The Long Emergency celebrated social commentator James Howard Kunstler explored how the terminal decline of oil production, combined with climate change, had the potential to put industrial civilization out of business. In World Made by Hand, an astonishing work of speculative fiction, Kunstler brings to life what America might be, a few decades hence, after these catastrophes converge. For the townspeople of Union Grove, New York, the future is nothing like they thought it would be. Transportation is slow and dangerous, so food is grown locally at great expense of time and energy, and the outside world is largely unknown. There may be a president, and he may be in Minneapolis now, but people aren’t sure. Their challenges play out in a dazzling, fully realized world of abandoned highways and empty houses, horses working the fields and rivers, no longer polluted, and replenished with fish. With the cost of oil skyrocketing—and with it the price of food—Kunstler’s extraordinary book, full of love and loss, violence and power, sex and drugs, depression and desperation, but also plenty of hope, is more relevant than ever.
Title: World Made by Hand: A Novel
Sales Rank: 5629 in Books
Author: James Howard Kunstler
Publisher: Grove Press, 2009-01-06, Paperback, 336 pages, ISBN: 0802144012
Package Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1 inches, 0.65 pounds
- Good but not great
- I picked up World Made by Hand because I saw it mentioned somewhere (can't remember where, sorry) and it sounded interesting. I was vaguely aware that it involves some social commentary but I didn't want to get involved in it too much and risk learning so much that I spoiled the book for myself. The main reason it grabbed my interest is because it's post-apocalyptic/speculative fiction.
- Not up to Kunstler's non-fiction books
- I looked forward to reading this novel because I was such a fan of Kunstler's non-fiction books, "The Long Emergency" and "The Goegraphy of Nowhere." Although the book kept my interest, I was disappointed by all the loose ends. What was the point in the Queen Bee? What happened to his relationship with his best friend's wife when the new younger… More reviews
- A technological dark age?
- I found "World Made by Hand" both fascinating and frustrating. It is a fascinating book as an artistic work describing a community of average people who did not understand the technology that made their lives possible, when that world came crashing down around them, and frustrating in that it was not necessary for things to fall that far down the rabbit hole.… More reviews
- Briarpatch Reader
- An average novel gets an average review. I bought this book mostly based on the 5 star ratings. I don't find it anything but an average read. Greatly dissapointed. More reviews
- World Made By Hand Is A Great Book
- World Made By Hand is a good fictional read. First book I've read by James Howard Kunstler. Interesting what if this should happen to our country situation. The story moves along at a good pace & is well written. Enjoyed it so much I ordered 2 more for gifts.… More reviews
- The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
- Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series)
- Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects
- When All Hell Breaks Loose
- Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (New Society Publishers)
