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The Bargain Nexus - World Made by Hand: A Novel
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List Price: $14.00
Our Price: $11.20
Your Save: $ 2.80 ( 20% )
Availability: Not yet published
Manufacturer: Grove Press
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780802144010
ISBN: 0802144012
Label: Grove Press
Manufacturer: Grove Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: 2009-01-06
Publisher: Grove Press
Studio: Grove Press
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting premise; not the best novel
Comment: I really liked the premise and thought that Kunstler developed it in an interesting way. I like the idea of regaining our humanity and perspective through less technology, more direct human interaction, and a reengagement with nature. That said, I think Kunstler would have been better off making this into a short story instead of a full-length novel. I thought it got a little silly towards the end, and the catalogue of Robert Earle's sexual encounters seemed to pander a bit to our baser insticts. Also, the excursion to Albany struck me as unecessary filler. To sum up, I think the author raises interesting issues but it's not the best novel ever written. If you like the ideas presented in this book, you might also like Rod Dreher's nonfiction work, Crunch Cons.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A solid page turner. "Real?" "Accurate?", "Likely?". Possibly not. But fascinating.
Comment: I initially followed a link from a short review of the book at [...].
I found the book very hard to put down. It produced one of those rare, late night, "reading marathon on a work night", finishes, for me.
I haven't read his prior work, "The Long Emergency". But for me the book stands well as a story on it's own. To be honest, based on common descriptions of his prior non-fiction efforts, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the book had very few speeches. He has a perspective on where the world is heading. But he didn't deliver long screeds or build inordinate numbers of straw-men trying to drive you to agree with his view.
I'm a guy. So I wasn't offended at the first-person masculine viewpoint and the lack of "strong" well-rounded women characters. Yup, it was "subtley" sexist from end to end. So is alot of classic historical fiction. But I don't that limitation prevent me from enjoying a book. I say "subtle", from the perspective that he didn't rant that women were "lesser". He had women in "homemaker" roles, largely in the background of the story. From the character development angle, there were a large number of male and female characters that the author introduced and walked offstage without deep development. But I accepted them without criticism, because I read the book more as the journaled recollections of a single man in the book's world.
I wasn't reading for polemics or deep messages. I wasn't reading to root for his characters, or revel in snappy exchanges of dialog. My primary interest was in how the protagonist's world had changed. And the interesting ways that people had coped (or-not). On that level, the book delivered.
As to the "accuracy" of the book:
Will we run out of oil eventually? Absolutely.
Have we done little to prepare, in the US? Most would say yes.
Is the world economy subject to critical failures? A glance at the newspaper today makes it hard to say 'No'.
Are we at risk for widespread resistant flu strains that can travel across high speed vectors that didn't exist in 1918? No doubt.
Will all of the above occur together, to bring down the world in the way he describes? Probably not. But quite a few good reads have been written on depictions of, "the worst case".
The fact is, with the current state of energy, the economy, and world markets, it's hard not to put yourself into the book, and try to envision what state you & yours will find yourself in, down the road.
Heh, makes you want to take up carpentry.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fiction into more Fiction
Comment: In the Long Emergency Kunstler is a fiction writer who attempted to awaken Americans to an impending doomsday scenario in the energy world. Kunstler argues that nothing can make a difference and everything in a "big box America" is bad. If you like far left liberal authors who have no scientific basis then this guy is perfect. Here is a guy who predicted that $140 a barrel oil would never go down as it currently stands at $80. Now that he has been dead wrong about oil prices he has shifted his emphasis to ranting about the financial sector. The guy has no credibility as he shifts back from non-fiction to fiction and fiction to non-fiction in his books and other writings.
If the guy was just a fiction writer he would be in the mediocre category with World Made by Hand. If you have already read The Long Emergency and see how off Kunstler is you won't waste your time with the World Made by Hand. If you are considering World Made by Hand as a stand alone book it is fair at best so there are better ways to spend your money. To make a long story short Kunstler is just another Sierra Club type trying to deliver another Y2K story to make a buck and a name for himself. If the poor guy had started with fiction and stayed there he may have had a chance. A shame.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Unfortunately.
Comment: I was actually looking very much forward to this one, having read the premise and some positive reviews. I'll have to go back and look at those reviews and see if any women wrote them. I'd be surprised, if so. Yes, this book sees a near distant future where the oil has dried up, some bombs have gone off here and there, there's no power and the infrastructure has collapsed. What's unfortunate is the lack of imagination on the part of the author, who has apparently never met a genuinely strong female in his life. All the female characters in this book are pathetic. His best friend's wife, who the main character is sleeping with, is on the verge of being unhinged. The woman he later takes in gives up during a fire in her home and doesn't even try to fight for the life of herself and her child. Other female characters are dimly lit feminine ideals, except for the absolutely absurd out of left field gigantic woman in the cult compound being fed cupcakes by handmaidens. And suddenly women are wearing dresses again? If you were in survival mode, a dress is the LAST thing you'd want to wear, believe me. Literally, he makes everything sound like the 1800s sprung anew with brief references to car lots and CVS pharmacy and other modern landmarks to point out just how CRAZY it all is, cause we're right back where we started from! Don't get me wrong. It would take frighteningly little to push our "civilization" back to pre-industrial mode. But to assume that just about everything, including social constructs, would completely revert... Ugh, sorry, I'm ranting. I was just really disappointed. I should definitely say that I gave it two stars instead of zero stars because I read it all the way to the end and did not throw it at the wall or in the trash. It has some interesting passages here and there and I certainly was curious to see what was going to happen, though the story just really didn't have the ring of truth for me and I had to push myself to finish it. Go read "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy if you want to read a really great (albeit grim and truly disturbing) example of post apocalyptic fiction.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Plausible situation
Comment: A good read on the airplane. The book moved quickly and the story line was interesting. It does give an interesting potential future. I think too many people 'hope against hope' and are not nearly logical or rational enough but in a state of denial. The book does have a brightness to it that I think a lot of people miss when Peak Oil is discussed. Overall, a good solid read that is not too difficult on the brain.
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Editorial Reviews:
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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.
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