World Made By Hand

[Deleted member 9511]

I highly recommend the World Made By Hand series of four novels by James Howard Kunstler http://kunstler.com/ I picked them up on a whim and couldn't put them down, reading all four books in less than a week (among other reading). I have nothing but praise for these books and the author.

I rarely read fiction. Can't really remember the last novel I read. The closest I usually come is creative non-fiction - sort of parables that intend to impart a particular knowledge. While hypothetical regarding the particular "history of the future" that Kunstler imagines, I would call these also works of creative non-fiction, as they are lessons much more more than they are mere entertainment.

 

[Yupo]

I read the first one. It was recommended to me by someone at 'post peak medicine', a blog about simple medical care and such. Not a bad novel. I think the things (people, places, situations) in the story are not so unlikely in a post collapse situation. The (few) people that saw it coming, prepared accordingly and were in good shape as far as economic position and creature comforts.
I'm keen to read the 2nd one sometime. Curious about the travels and stories of the son. Very curious about the prophetess.

Seems that the psychopaths rose right to the top, right away. Maybe this is how we should be prepared to identify them.

 

[loreta]

It looks interesting, I love to read books that deal with the end of the world. :) Thanks for the recommandation. I hope you don't mind if I put a description of the book that I found somewhere.

Title: A History of the Future (World Made by Hand #3)
Author: James Howard Kunstler


A History of the Future is the third thrilling novel in Kunstler’s "World Made By Hand" series, an exploration of family and morality as played out in the small town of Union Grove.

Following the catastrophes of the twenty-first century—the pandemics, the environmental disaster, the end of oil, the ensuing chaos—people are doing whatever they can to get by and pursuing a simpler and sometimes happier existence. In little Union Grove in upstate New York, the townspeople are preparing for Christmas. Without the consumerist shopping frenzy that dogged the holidays of the previous age, the season has become a time to focus on family and loved ones. It is a stormy Christmas Eve when Robert Earle’s son Daniel arrives back from his two years of sojourning throughout what is left of the United States. He collapses from exhaustion and illness, but as he recovers tells the story of the break-up of the nation into three uneasy independent regions and his journey into the dark heart of the New Foxfire Republic centered in Tennesee and led by the female evangelical despot, Loving Morrow. In the background, Union Grove has been shocked by the Christmas Eve double murder by a young mother, in the throes of illness, of her husband and infant son. Town magistrate Stephen Bullock is in a hanging mood.

A History of the Future is attention-grabbing and provocative, but also lyrical, tender, and comic—a vision of a future of America that is becoming more and more convincing and perhaps even desirable with each passing day.

World Made by Hand is a dystopian novel by James Howard Kunstler published in 2008. Set in the fictional town of Union Grove, New York, the novel follows a cast of characters as they navigate a world stripped of its modern comforts, ravaged by terrorism, epidemics, and the economic upheaval of peak oil.[1]

Narrated by Robert Earle, a local carpenter who has lost his wife and son, the novel focuses on several contrasting groups meant to represent the directions society could go after a breakdown of modern social norms. In the beginning of the novel, the citizens of Union Grove are living on the tail end of a national catastrophe, with their community slowly falling apart from neglect and natural decay. One group is led by Wayne Karp, a rough leader of scrappers and thugs who salvage from around the county and live in a group of trailers known as Karpsville. As the story begins Brother Jobe comes to town, the leader of a religious group called the New Faith Church, who come from the south and settle into the old high school. Another faction is led by Steven Bulloch, a landed farmer with vision who sets his farm up like an English manor and becomes self-sufficient. Much of the rest of the nation seems to be falling apart, with nuclear blasts in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., cities devolving and a fractured United States. All of these forces struggle to respect life in a way that was taken for granted before events changed, and build pragmatically for a new future. Earle's experiences are the focus of this struggle.

Kunstler explores themes of local and sustainable living. In interviews, Kunstler describes his imaginary world as an "enlightened nineteenth century."

 

[100c]

Added to my 'to read' list on Goodreads. When I need a break from writing, I hope to read them.
They look good. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Deleted member 9511]

I have nothing but praise for these books and the author.

Well...maybe the books, but not necessarily the author. His most recent post http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/lit-and-sputtering/ seems more than a bit biased to the point of exposing a latent bigotry. Oh, well, the books are still good.