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The Need to Be Whole

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The Need to Be Whole

By: Wendell Berry
Narrated by: Nick Offerman
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Wendell Berry has never been afraid to speak up for the dispossessed. The Need to Be Whole continues the work he began in The Hidden Wound (1970) and The Unsettling of America (1977), demanding a careful exploration of this hard, shared truth: The wealth of the mighty few governing this nation has been built on the unpaid labor of others.

Without historical understanding of this practice of dispossession—the displacement of Native peoples, the destruction of both the land and land-based communities, ongoing racial division—we are doomed to continue industrialism’s assault on both the natural world and every sacred American ideal. Berry writes, “To deal with so great a problem, the best idea may not be to go ahead in our present state of unhealth to more disease and more product development. It may be that our proper first resort should be to history: to see if the truth we need to pursue might be behind us where we have ceased to look.” If there is hope for us, this is it: that we honestly face our past and move into a future guided by the natural laws of affection. This book furthers Mr. Berry’s part in what is surely our country’s most vital conversation.

©2022 Wendell Berry (P)2022 Recorded Books African American Studies Americas Black & African American Racism & Discrimination Social Sciences Specific Demographics United States Discrimination Law Inspiring Social justice

Featured Article: Best of the Year—The 12 Best History Listens of 2022


We’ve noticed—and applaud—a trend in our members' preferences for history: Audible listeners want to hear about events of the past with both discipline and nuance. You want authoritative synthesis and reliable facts, but also to hear about people's lived experience, preferably in novelistic detail. And all of us love some juicy reconstruction from time to time. This year, we picked the best performances to fill that tall order.

Featured Article Best of the Year The 12 Best History Listens of 2022
Insightful Perspective • Thoughtful Analysis • Tender Narration • Articulate Writing • Clear Vision • Necessary Wisdom
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Thank you Wendell Berry for this great effort. I will be forever changed by it.

Exceptional.

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berry looked at the nuance of race... something no one else is doing. book is long

spot on

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Berry drives home the social, economic, and ecological losses suffered by the masses as a result of industrialization, extraction, and wealth building of the few. Somewhere in there is a message of self-sufficiency as an avenue to community interdependence, and the healing powers of the small farm town lifeway in terms of race relations. He exposes the intimate work lives of those who have labored in fields, and makes us nostalgic for a life most of us have not, and likely cannot, attain.

I don't agree with every take in this book, but I respect Berry's perspective as they cause me to struggle with some of my own convictions. E.g., he makes a case for leaving confederate statues standing. While somewhat repetitive throughout, the book is cohesive and the ideas are clear.

An important read for anyone concerned with the future (and past) of the US. Critical perspectives, some difficult to accept.

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Just read the damn book. He’s much better at explaining it than me. Probably the most important book I’ve read in my twenties.

Truth and wisdom concerning the wounds we suffer as humans in America.

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This book should be mandatory reading for everyone who calls themselves an American Window Barry has the purest and clearest vision of the dismantling of the American early culture

Extraordinary

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I want to say this is required reading as a modern American, but it’s probably just required as a human being. There is of course a focus on distinctly American problems / shared history, but the scope of his diagnosis encapsulates all humankind and the way we see the living world around us as a whole. WB is a modern American poet, philosopher, and, in this work, spiritual physician.

Required reading

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Wendell Berry rationally, thoughtfully, and logically articulates difficult and controversial concepts with self deprecation and honesty. Agree or disagree, he opens necessary conversations.

Poet and Sage

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No one but Nick Offerman could render this carefully reasoned and important book with the tenderness and depth and wit it so deserves.

It’s crucial that Wendell Berry be read and heard and taken to heart as it’s impossible to understand who we are as Americans — in all our hues and creeds, our dialects and ethnicities — without this kind of deep historical grounding. We all need to rediscover ourselves in terms of values.

We all need to be healed, as does the land we’ve taken and abused. To be made whole is at the base of the Greek word that gives us salvation.

This book — so clearsighted — left me feeling strangely uplifted, knowing myself to be so lucky to be in the presence of such loving and necessary genius

Necessary Reading for These Troubled Times

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It has been a blessed time of listening.
Deep reverencing of the earth. Imperative understanding of life.
Wendell Berry has the quality of teaching that I most admire.

Uncommon candor, critical insights

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An incredibly thoughtful look at America: how we treat each other and our land. Wendell Berry at his finest.

Berry is outstanding.

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