World Made by Hand
The World Made by Hand Novels, Book 1
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Narrated by:
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Jim Meskimen
About this listen
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.
The electricity has flickered out. The automobile age is over. In Union Grove, a little town in upstate New York, the future is nothing like people thought it would be. Life is hard and close to the bone. 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. The townspeople’s 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.
This is the story of Robert Earle and his fellow townspeople and what happens to them one summer in a country that has changed profoundly. A powerful tale of love, loss, violence, and desperation, World Made by Hand is also lyrical and tender, a surprising story of a new America struggling to be born - a story more relevant now than ever.
©2008 James Howard Kunstler (P)2010 Blackstone AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and recraft a world of automatons, ornate clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, and intrepid orphans - decked out in corsets, clockwerk suits, and tall black boots - solve dastardly crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships.
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MMMM, Orca Bacon
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 09-14-13
By: Kelly Link - editor, and others
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The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
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Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
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Fallen Angels
- By: Patricia Hickman
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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During the Great Depression, Jeb Nubey is running from the law when he meets three abandoned children. With nowhere else to go the group passes a stormy night in a comforting church. When they are discovered, a case of mistaken identity ensues. It seems the congregation has been waiting for their new pastor, a widower with three kids. Looks like more trouble for Jeb. Yet the chance for a steady job and three squares a day is too good to turn down.
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Touching
- By Christina on 11-11-04
By: Patricia Hickman
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Collected Stories of William Faulkner
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer, Susan Denaker, Scott Brick, and others
- Length: 31 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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This magisterial collection of short works by Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner reminds listeners of his ability to compress his epic vision into narratives as hard and wounding as bullets. Among the 42 selections in this audiobook are such classics as "A Bear Hunt", "A Rose for Emily", "Two Soldiers", and "The Brooch".
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Audiobook Table of Contents (by Chapter)
- By John McKinney on 09-27-20
By: William Faulkner
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Way of the Wolf
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- By: E. E. Knight
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel, E. E. Knight (Introduction)
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Louisiana, 2065. A lot has changed in the 43rd year of the Kurian Order. Possessed of an unnatural and legendary hunger, the bloodthirsty Reapers have come to Earth to establish a New Order built on the harvesting of enslaved human souls. They rule the planet. They thrive on the scent of fear. And if it is night, as sure as darkness, they will come.
On this pitiless world, the indomitable spirit of mankind still breathes in Lieutenant David Valentine.
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Its what you expect, and thats not a bad thing.
- By Kevin McLaughlin on 11-26-08
By: E. E. Knight
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Varina
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- By: Charles Frazier
- Narrated by: Molly Parker
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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With her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects a life of security as a landowner. He instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history - culpable regardless of her intentions. The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters, and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives.
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Read it rather than listen
- By Anonymous on 08-31-18
By: Charles Frazier
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Alas, Babylon
- By: Pat Frank
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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This true modern masterpiece is built around the two fateful words that make up the title and herald the end - “Alas, Babylon.” When a nuclear holocaust ravages the United States, a thousand years of civilization are stripped away overnight, and tens of millions of people are killed instantly. But for one small town in Florida, miraculously spared, the struggle is just beginning, as men and women of all backgrounds join together to confront the darkness....
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One apocalypse--hold the zombies
- By Lesley on 01-07-14
By: Pat Frank
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The Dead Cat Bounce
- By: Sarah Graves
- Narrated by: Lindsay Ellison
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Since she bought her rambling fixer-upper of a house, Jacobia Tiptree has gotten used to finding things broken. But her latest problem isn't so easily repaired. Along with the rotting floor joists and sagging support beams, there's the little matter of the dead man in Jake's storeroom, an ice pick planted firmly in his cranium. Jake's unknown guest turns out to be local boy turned billionaire Threnody McIlwaine.
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too slow of a story...
- By Annette on 03-13-18
By: Sarah Graves
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The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
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Hang in
- By W.Denis on 07-11-05
By: William Faulkner
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Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
- By: Allan Gurganus
- Narrated by: Barbara McCulloh
- Length: 49 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Allan Gurganus's Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All became an instant classic upon its publication. Critics and fans alike fell in love with the voice of 99-year-old Confederate widow Lucy Marsden, one of the most entertaining and loquacious heroines in American literature. Lucy married at the turn of the 20th century, when she was 15 and her husband was 50. If Colonel William Marsden was a veteran of the "War for Southern Independence", Lucy became a "veteran of the veteran" with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood.
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Dated.
- By edie butler on 04-06-21
By: Allan Gurganus
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What listeners say about World Made by Hand
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michelle
- 08-20-12
Great book
What other book might you compare World Made by Hand to and why?
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What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?
The guy sounded like the talking pc that you type into and the women's voices were awful.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes
Any additional comments?
Great book. Nice concepts based on Kunstler's future predictions of a post oil future with a fun story to go alongside it.
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2 people found this helpful
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- David
- 06-27-13
A kind of Amish post-apocalypse
Among the many subgenres I have a weakness for, one of my favorites is the post-apocalyptic thriller. World Made By Hand is not a thriller, though there is some action and violence. It occupies some strange middle ground between The Stand and Earth Abides. James Howard Kunstler is more interested in telling a story about what people do when the lights go out and how they go back to churning their own butter and making their own candles than a broader story about the collapse of civilization. In fact, that theme (as indicated by the title of the novel) seems to be the reason why the author wrote this book. While the residents of Union Grove, New York now live hard, sometimes precarious lives, and Kunstler does not neglect to show people suffering trauma and not coping very well with the death of the world they knew, the subtext throughout the book seems to be "Maybe it's better this way." The narrator, who by virtue of being the only responsible adult who was too much of a sucker not to say 'No' is now the mayor of Union Grove, frequently ruminates on how much better and sturdier things are now when you have to make them to last, just like in the old days, and seems to regard his old modern consumer life with a mixture of yearning and ironic disdain.
So there is quite a bit of talk about how people have gone back to a primarily agrarian existence, without oil or electricity, and how they struggle to survive when most folks don't have the skills needed for a post-industrial society. It's one of those books that makes you think about what you would do: if all of a sudden we got knocked back to the 19th century by some sort of apocalypse, do you have any survival skills? Any useful skills that would make you valuable to a community. Well, I'm no prepper and I'm afraid my own skill set would probably prove a bit meager.
We aren't given many details about what happened in this world made by hand. There is talk of recent wars in the Middle East, and bombs took out Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles and other cities (though apparently not New York City), and the U.S. government, and global civilization, seems to have essentially collapsed. The folks in Union Grove get little news from up the Hudson and even less from anywhere outside New York.
That said, they have been, as Brother Job of the New Faith Church points out, awfully lucky so far. They've managed to keep their town running with no major disasters, and their region has not yet reached the stage of feuding warlords and roving bandit gangs. However, lawlessness is certainly taking over the countryside, which causes most of the problems in the book as they have to deal first with a trade ship that was sent down the Hudson to New York City and never returned, and then with a local troublemaker who has set himself up as a feudal lord on the edge of town with a bunch of bikers, vagrants, and other ne'er do wells.
The New Faith Church, a bunch of healthy young evangelicals, show up in Union Grove and want to settle there, which proves to be a mixed blessing. They are (it seems) basically clean, decent, hard-working folks, and they bring fresh blood and, incidentally, a lot of combat vets. However, they definitely have proselytizing on the agenda, and being an instant power in the community, there are bound to be tensions.
It's a well-constructed story and the world, while light on details, makes sense. No major suspensions of disbelief, until the end, where Kunstler seems to be hinting at the encroaching of supernatural elements. As Brother Job says, "Science don't rule the roost no more." It's both odd given the straightforward, realistic style of the rest of the novel, and also seems to be in keeping with the idea of a "world made by hand" being somehow deeper and more spiritual.
Well, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't terribly exciting, and I'm not inclined to sign up for the rest of the series to learn just how religious the author decides to get. Yes, our modern consumer lifestyle probably is unsustainable and many things are lost when everything is commercial and transient. On the other hand, as the events in World Made By Hand show, it's not a great improvement to let the world be run by whoever has the most charisma and guns, and I have no faith in the nice folks of the New Faith Church not turning into witch-burning science-hating zealots given a generation or so to cement their power. So, while I feel a certain sympathy for the idea that the world would actually be a better place without Walmarts and reality TV, I'm not willing to throw out electricity, antibiotics, and indoor plumbing to get it.
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19 people found this helpful
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- CD
- 08-02-16
makes you think
what will the future be like? What happens if things go south? how will man kind recover? what will life be like? Here is one tale to make you think.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Lisa
- 10-07-22
He said, she said, I said
The actual story line is good, the narration is good, but the author couldn’t seem to find a way to write dialog without ending everything with “he said”, “she said”, “I said.” It reminded me of a Dick and Jane children’s book. (Hi” Jane said. “How are you?” Dick said. “Bark” the dog said. “That was funny” Jane said.) The narrator changed his voice when reading the different character’s dialog so he could have
just left it out even if that is how the author wrote it. It’s crazy something so small could distract from an otherwise good story but it really does.
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- Sandra Woolstenhulme
- 09-25-18
a bit peeved
Overall i liked this book. But was pretty unhappy about author's writing when a young woman was not raped but only touched by the hooligans against her will. treated sexual molestation like it was nothing because she was not raped.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Robin
- 08-16-21
very good dystopian book
if your looking for a more mellow, calmer dystopian book this is it. it dont have any of the unbelievable scenarios like most in the series have. It has just the right amount of action.
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- Carlos O.
- 04-21-22
Fiction is fiction - English went back to 1800 too
The story is good and fiction is fiction. In this one we need to process that even though the tale takes place in the 21st century that we regressed in the language to the 19th century.
High hopes for the series. The next three books will hopefully not be the typical regurgitation of the prior books with enough fluff to count for a novel.
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- Brett
- 11-18-12
I actually enjoyed it.
If you could sum up World Made by Hand in three words, what would they be?
This is similar to the rest of a growing genre of post apocalyptic and slow apocalyptic fiction. This is my favorite from what I've heard thus far. I listened to this about a year or so ago, and am looking for more in the genre. I found myself saying, "are there any more of those World Made by Hand stories. I liked them."
What other book might you compare World Made by Hand to and why?
Patriots - James Wesley Rawles
American Apocalypse - Nova
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
not really.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Julie
- 04-10-12
Enjoyable Easy Read
Where does World Made by Hand rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Pretty good story and an idea of what the world could be but I would have enjoyed more detail. I would call this 'peak-oil or post apocalyptic lite'. I will listen to book 2 , The Witch of Hebron next.
Which character – as performed by Jim Meskimen – was your favorite?
I enjoyed Jim Meskimen's narration a great deal. Whether he was speaking for Brother Jobe, Wayne Karp, the main character Robert Earl, even the women, he was very flexible. I would definitely listen to an audio narration by him again and would put him in the class of Will Patton as a narrator (Alas, Babylon) - Excellent!
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Did it in a couple of sittings, the story line was interesting enough and Jim Meskiman's narrating style were solid.
Any additional comments?
Minor annoyance: The word
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- serialnumber55
- 11-28-13
Great start, but then . . .
Any additional comments?
Disease and other complications have returned the world to pre-petroleum technology - a traditional setting for this genre. We are in a town that is hobbling along, relying on tradition and custom, rather than any real government or law enforcement. Much of this book, the first in a series (I know there is another one out, but I haven't yet read it), is a great introduction to the protagonist, whose wife has died and whose son left town a few years before. He is in a relatively secret relationship with the wife of his best friend, the local Congregationalist minister (although it is apparently not a secret to the minister - they just never talk about it). A cultish group of men and women have bought the local high school and are fixing it up as a place to live. At times cooperative, they also demonstrate that they are willing to violate others' rights to get them to conform to their expectations and religion. At the same time, a group on the edge of town who supply materials gleaned from garbage dumps and demolition, are also demonstrating their unwillingness to abide by standard modes of behavior; they engage in an apparent murder, coercion, and theft. So with this - and an attractive young widow - as the backdrop, we become engaged in the protagonist's life, a life that is expressed in great detail. But as we get closer to the end of the book, and as we become to suspect that the science fiction in this story may not be limited to just the hypothesized near-future (indeed, it may creep over into fantasy, but we don't ever get to really know in this book), the detail starts to be overlooked. The book rushes to an end. Now I know that the details may come out in the next volume, but the way that the likely war was averted between the town and the inhabitants of the junk yard was just too easy. If the book just ended there, ok. But the protagonist relates a summary of the next few months, and somehow peace happens, his conjugal relationship with the young widow continues, and there is no mention of the reaction of his previous lover, the minister's wife. It just ends too smoothly. I would have preferred a cliff-hanger to the easy gloss that is provided. I happen to relish (and am writing a novel in) this genre, and I really enjoyed this book, up until the last - rushed - part. I have bought the next in the series, but I am a bit worried that the craft of the first three-quarters of the first book will not be achieved in the second. We will see.
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