"World Made by Hand" by James Howard Kunstler
Last week Friday I received in the mail from Amazon.com my copy of James Howard Kunstler's new (2008) novel, "World Made by Hand." I starting reading it quickly that evening, finishing by Saturday afternoon, and am now reading it through a second time over three evenings.
I recommend this book to anyone who is cognizant of Peak Oil, and has read such books as "The Long Emergency" or "Collapse." If you are looking for examples or illustrations of how living really may change in the future, this book provides those.
I won't focus on what happens in the book, other than to describe it this way: The story takes place during one hot summer in about 20 years time in a fictitious town call Union Grove in east central New York, in the upper Hudson Valley north of Albany and east of Saratoga Springs. Robert Earle, a former software engineer out of Boston and now a carpenter in Union Grove (where his deceased wife grew up), is the main character and narrator of the story. Basically Union Grove is a town unto itself, as are countless towns and cities across what in name is still the United States, but in reality doesn't function anywhere close to a nation. A town isolated by lack of significant transportation elsewhere. A terrorist nuclear device went off in Los Angeles some dozen or so years earlier (none of these details are spelled out in great numeric detail), effectively shutting down the country economically. Shipping and other trading came to a halt, oil from outside sources all but disappeared, several resource wars erupted in the Holy Land and elsewhere involving the U.S. military, and the government in Washington became totally ineffective in dealing with all this, made permanent by a second terrorist nuclear device going off in Washington. Cars are all but gone, salvaged earlier for their scrap metal. Schools and colleges are closed. The only electricity is that a local enterprise might have from a community-built hydroelectric dam, or what might appear from elsewhere just a hour at a time maybe once a month. And the population is significantly smaller, killed by a pandemic called the "Mexican flu" in the book, with very few younger people around. Antibiotics and drugs don't exist, replaced by doctors and dentists (the few there are), and by individuals, using opium, alcohol, and marijuana. The killing described in the book reminds one of the western U.S. in the 1800s. And so on.
What I like about the book is the lessens it begins to teach. How we are going to, for instance, have to do all work manually. Computers won't exist. Telephone won't exist. Newspapers, assuming paper is available, won't include national, let alone international, news, with life being very local. Death will become a more common experience, whether it be by riots and lawless killing or by illness or lack of medicines. Transport of goods and people will be by boat, horse-drawn wagons, or on foot, on carts pushed or pulled by human power. Barter is the norm, with many needing to work on farms, and others needing to maintain gardens. Most houses will be empty, torn down for the lumber, and long-since closed town dumps reopened - not for dumping, but for digging it all up again for stuff to reuse.
In other words, life as we know it today will quickly become a memory to those still alive.
Another fascinating outcome for me of reading the book is how much it suggests our spending and activities of time today are a total waste of effort in the end. What an incredible waste of energy and money we are going through today when you think about this life in the future.
While the particular future described in this book may not necessarily come to pass, or in this specific timeline, some form of it will no doubt do so just because of peak oil and the decline of such a critical resource in the future. It makes one think that the current wars in the Middle East and the economic declines of today may just be the very beginning of this "long emergency" already begun. Reading the book will help you imagine living in the future, which is by all means doable and viable, much like it was for our ancestors back before the Civil War.
I hardily endorse the "World Made by Hand" as a book you should buy, read, and share. It is a nice "wake up call" that complements non-fiction books by providing vivid images in one's mind. I'm waiting now for my wife to have some time to read it, as I would like to know her reaction.
In another post soon, I may describe a second book I also purchased and read this past weekend - "Earth Abides," 1949, by George Stewart. An award-winning book, this is another post-apocalyptic novel, in this case about a mysterious virus that wipes out nearly the entire world's population except for small pockets of people who were immune, and the particular re-emergence of one particular enclave in Berkeley, California, led by Isherwood ("Ish") Williams, the main character in this book.
Kevin Anderson
Dubuque, Iowa
I recommend this book to anyone who is cognizant of Peak Oil, and has read such books as "The Long Emergency" or "Collapse." If you are looking for examples or illustrations of how living really may change in the future, this book provides those.
I won't focus on what happens in the book, other than to describe it this way: The story takes place during one hot summer in about 20 years time in a fictitious town call Union Grove in east central New York, in the upper Hudson Valley north of Albany and east of Saratoga Springs. Robert Earle, a former software engineer out of Boston and now a carpenter in Union Grove (where his deceased wife grew up), is the main character and narrator of the story. Basically Union Grove is a town unto itself, as are countless towns and cities across what in name is still the United States, but in reality doesn't function anywhere close to a nation. A town isolated by lack of significant transportation elsewhere. A terrorist nuclear device went off in Los Angeles some dozen or so years earlier (none of these details are spelled out in great numeric detail), effectively shutting down the country economically. Shipping and other trading came to a halt, oil from outside sources all but disappeared, several resource wars erupted in the Holy Land and elsewhere involving the U.S. military, and the government in Washington became totally ineffective in dealing with all this, made permanent by a second terrorist nuclear device going off in Washington. Cars are all but gone, salvaged earlier for their scrap metal. Schools and colleges are closed. The only electricity is that a local enterprise might have from a community-built hydroelectric dam, or what might appear from elsewhere just a hour at a time maybe once a month. And the population is significantly smaller, killed by a pandemic called the "Mexican flu" in the book, with very few younger people around. Antibiotics and drugs don't exist, replaced by doctors and dentists (the few there are), and by individuals, using opium, alcohol, and marijuana. The killing described in the book reminds one of the western U.S. in the 1800s. And so on.
What I like about the book is the lessens it begins to teach. How we are going to, for instance, have to do all work manually. Computers won't exist. Telephone won't exist. Newspapers, assuming paper is available, won't include national, let alone international, news, with life being very local. Death will become a more common experience, whether it be by riots and lawless killing or by illness or lack of medicines. Transport of goods and people will be by boat, horse-drawn wagons, or on foot, on carts pushed or pulled by human power. Barter is the norm, with many needing to work on farms, and others needing to maintain gardens. Most houses will be empty, torn down for the lumber, and long-since closed town dumps reopened - not for dumping, but for digging it all up again for stuff to reuse.
In other words, life as we know it today will quickly become a memory to those still alive.
Another fascinating outcome for me of reading the book is how much it suggests our spending and activities of time today are a total waste of effort in the end. What an incredible waste of energy and money we are going through today when you think about this life in the future.
While the particular future described in this book may not necessarily come to pass, or in this specific timeline, some form of it will no doubt do so just because of peak oil and the decline of such a critical resource in the future. It makes one think that the current wars in the Middle East and the economic declines of today may just be the very beginning of this "long emergency" already begun. Reading the book will help you imagine living in the future, which is by all means doable and viable, much like it was for our ancestors back before the Civil War.
I hardily endorse the "World Made by Hand" as a book you should buy, read, and share. It is a nice "wake up call" that complements non-fiction books by providing vivid images in one's mind. I'm waiting now for my wife to have some time to read it, as I would like to know her reaction.
In another post soon, I may describe a second book I also purchased and read this past weekend - "Earth Abides," 1949, by George Stewart. An award-winning book, this is another post-apocalyptic novel, in this case about a mysterious virus that wipes out nearly the entire world's population except for small pockets of people who were immune, and the particular re-emergence of one particular enclave in Berkeley, California, led by Isherwood ("Ish") Williams, the main character in this book.
Kevin Anderson
Dubuque, Iowa
posted by Kevin Anderson K9IUA at 12:39 PM
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