by James Howard Kunstler
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Product Description
In the best-seller The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler explored how the terminal decline of oil production had the potential to put industrial civilization out of business. With World Made By Hand Kunstler makes an imaginative leap into the future, a few decades hence, and shows us what life may be like after these coming catastrophes—the end of oil, climate change, global pandemics, and resource wars—converge. For the townspeople of Union Grove, New York, the future is not what 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. As the heat of summer intensifies, the residents struggle with the new way of life in a world of abandoned highways and empty houses, horses working the fields and rivers replenished with fish. A captivating, utterly realistic novel, World Made by Hand takes speculative fiction beyond the apocalypse and shows what happens when life gets extremely local.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 kunstler should stick to blogging & stuff, 2008-07-05
this book... well, sucked. i got it from the library and actually read it all the way through... but not so much because i was intrigued as because i didn't feel it was fair to rag on it without reading it first.
i am a BIG fan of kunstler and i read his blog regularly. i have found his nonfiction books to be truly enlightening (as well as well-written and actually funny) and have passed them along to numerous friends. i have plagued mr. kunstler with fan email. i take all of his predictions and warnings to heart. kunstler is a great writer... of nonfiction.
i tried once before to read one of his novels but couldn't get more than a couple pages in. given the topic of this book i was much more determined. and it's the subject matter that is this novel's only redeemable characteristic. kunstler has made a valiant attempt at fleshing out an image of a post-carbon world, one we're extremely likely to be actually living in, in the near future. i have no doubt about that. nor do i have much doubt about the plausibility of what he describes.
i do have doubts regarding why he bothers writing fiction when he's so bad at it.
other reviewers have noted that his characterizations are shallow... and that his descriptions of women rarely make it past their physical features. my chief complaint is that the dialogue is terrible. it's unrealistic and it's used as a very obvious vehicle for giving the reader information about the world they're visiting. "say, earle - don't you ever miss the old times, back when we used to have electricity & cars & stuff? now things are so hard, and our womenfolk can't hardly bear children... i miss cold beer." i paraphrase... but this is generally how it goes.
besides the crappy dialogue, there's a rather bizarre story arc. the main adventure of the story is over with halfway through, and the rest is just a jumbled mess of nearly pornographic depictions of people at their worst, giving in to their basest natures. except for the main character, who remains an upright citizen and as a reward is able to score a really young, petite li'l bride. nothing is said about how he deals with the woman he was previously banging, who was older but she made a fine jug o' wine.
i'm relieved to be done reading this book - it's due back at the library today and it's not worth paying a fine on. i hope that kunstler returns to what he's best at - nonfiction - and writes more books about our impending doom in the non-fiction way. i'll keep reading his blog.
if you're curious to know what kind of world he's created in this book but don't want to bother reading it, just imagine "little house on the prairie" set in a world where instead of endless prairie there are lots of former strip malls and the older people have almost dream-like memories of living in a world with cars and plasma TVs. that's really all you need to know.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Starts a 5, digresses downward..., 2008-07-01
I'm glad I'm not the only one seeking a salve to "The Road" (which was profound, but terrifying - an absolute 5+ star).
While I did liked some of the messages of the book -- it's important to prepare now for a very possible, if not probable change in lifestyle and know how to "do stuff" -- the book overall is just "eh" for me. I wanted to like it...it started off well.
The first chapters were truly interesting. I couldn't put the thing down. I thought the speech patterns were funny in their mix of old fashioned lingo and modern language. He is great at describing minutae. But....he's not so great describing people or developing their persona. After the halfway point, I struggled to move on. There are too many characters that don't have any depth. The women are Stepford. Why would all the women in this community be so defeated? The only one with a bit of spunk is the widow, Britney; but she is awfully underdeveloped as a character. Why was her marriage bad? He stated that, but didn't go any further. I wanted to know. Why would his best friend just turn the other way as his wife had an affair with him? Lots of couples go through "dry spells" and they don't pass their wife off to their best friend for "weekly visits". That didn't develop plot. It was just stupid. Why did the musical group he belonged to play primarily 19th century music? They would've played classical, pop, modern, jazz, bluegrass, etc...they were products of the 21st century, not 1850.
As mentioned in other reviews, the lack of ammunition was a really big pet peeve of mine. I know people who re-load shells. We lived in a rural hunting community in the great frozen northlands for 3 years -- reloading was very common because it was economical. The equipment is all non-electric. And I would have to assume after the manufactured supplies for re-loading were expended, that people would just figure it out...they've been doing it for millenia. Look at black-powder muskets during Colonial times...those supplies were manufactured in the same type of "culture" as is suggested in this story. Plenty of people in rural upstate New York would be hunters familiar with firearms -- someone would have become the town gunsmith. I also think a barber would have set up shop before the New Faithers arrived. People in Colonial America liked to look good, too, you know. Every western (movie) has a barbershop -- and the wild wild west was a lot wilder than this town. America is very integrated racially, even in small town America. Where were the minorities?
I don't think they would have had to rely on "the general" as much as they did. I think they would have started making almost everything they needed. And if people didn't know how to "do stuff" I can't believe all of the books simply vanished; they would read HOW to do something. Right here in my home, I have books on horticulture, quilting, breakmaking, etc. Go to any craft fair, and you can find many different kinds of handmade soap, candles, jams, dried herbs, for example. Even crafts and hobbies considered frivolous today would prove useful. People just know how to do stuff. Interesting stuff, like weaving clothing, knitting, carpentry, gardening, writing, etc. I make all of my own bread, and know how to make yogurt and fresh cheese; I know how to make a reed basket without any hardware; I have lots of friends who can and preserve produce, dry meats and produce, etc. And we're not even close to being "survivalists!" There is a whole religion (ahem, residing primarily in Utah) that strongly recommends that their members have food on hand for x number of people for x number of months/years -- I have friends involved with this said religion, and they are *ready* for such a future. I just don't think quite as many people would be in the dire straights that the author suggests. *However, I do agree that the people that would be most unprepared and ill-equipped would be residing in large cities, as he suggests. Rural communities would fare much better.
I guess I'm done with my rambling 12:35 am review.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Compelling Vision of Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia, 2008-06-29
James Howard Kunstler has crafted a compelling and fascinating dystopian vision of post-Apocalyptic America. Bombs have leveled the great epicenters of American society and the latter is plunged back into a Hobbesian existence that resembles pre-industrial society. Think Mad Max, without internal combustion engines.
The focus of the narrative is in an upstate area of New York. The protagonist is Robert Earle, a former software executive now turned carpenter. When he is deputized as the mayor of his settlement, he is thrust into roles for which he has little preparation or appetite. Life in this era is nasty, brutish and short.
Many who read this may be familiar with Kunstler's non-fiction book of about two and a half years ago, "The Long Emergency." "World Made By Hand "may be the fictional representation of Kunstler's vision of where society is headed. I found the narrative relatively free of preachy political polemics or overtones, though.
It has been a while since I have read a novel so hard to put down, characters so richly drawn. I was not expecting the book to be this good.
Excellent!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Very thought-provoking, 2008-06-22
Mr. Kunstler is a fantastic writer, and the book was very thought-provoking. Whether you believe all the theories in The Long Emergency is not important. It is still an interesting story and a very good read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
This is a must read!, 2008-06-19
This book clearly presents long-term potentials of the energy crisis, pandemics, food shortages, and nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists. Can any of us honestly say that those potentials do not exist?
Kunstler also takes a look at group dynamics through distinct social groupings that people fall into in times of desperation. From the plantation overlord, "I'll take care of you in exchange for your freedoms" mentality so prevalent in American politics today, the religious zealot/fanatical group absolutely sure they are right in all things they say and do, the gang mentality marked by extreme violence and degradation, and the small town diverse live and let live mindset, Kunstler shows how these mindsets might interact in a world without government, surviving only through self-sufficiency.
Back in the 1960s and 70s, a book that was required reading in most high schools and colleges was Alas Babylon. Kunstler's book has the feel of an updated version of Frank's book. Just as Alas Babylon offered the opportunity for those of us who were in school through the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War an opportunity to think and talk about the events that had the potential to change our lives forever, this book will afford the same opportunity to the current generation.
Buy it. Digest it. Share it.
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