The World-Ending Fire

A fascinating tribute to the life of the land ... Berry's writings are timelier than ever

Laura Garmeson, Financial Times

This collection sees the American published on these islands for the first time, and now he has finally stepped ashore, it's worth getting to know him ... Berry overturns plenty of thoughtful topsoil on environmental issues with a precise pen, and clears any thicket of cosy consensus with a clear eye and cutting hand

Irish Times

Maybe you don't care much about farming, but these essays, which move from food culture to feminism to literacy to global economics, confront the idea that the rotten ways we treat one another are rooted in the rotten ways we treat the land. [...] Berry draws endlessly and non-repetitively on the deep well of the lived truth of farm life, which delivers up sweet, clear lines of poetry and local lore and a kind of immediate authenticity. [...] I believe in the project laid out in The World-Ending Fire, the project of finding our humanity in humility, in living as described in the essay "The Agrarian Standard" as "local adaptation, which requires bringing local nature, local people, local economy, and local culture into a practical and enduring harmony." This is something you can do, something that no government, corporation, church, or law enforcement body can stop you from doing, an action in which you can find some measure of empowerment and freedom for you and your neighbors. It's as easy as planting a tree.

Dean Kuiper, Los Angeles Review of Books