World Made by Hand


Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
7
Narrator
3
Release Date
August 2010
Duration
9 hours 40 minutes
Summary
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.
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Reviews
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Philip R.

I bought this book when it was released, along with the long emergency. The audiobook was a good way to revisit the book. Many of the reviews I have read are so harsh but, for those who have studied depressions and famine around the world, this book gives an insight into what could happen in the future. Remember, world debt is now measured in quadrillions and, the oligarchy is going to make you pay for it. How does it go, you will own nothing and be happy. I am very happy to add this to my collection.

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Barry C.

Couldn’t get past 4 hours. Very slow paced, characters not engaging. Read more like a boring western. It might portray how society declines and we return to “the Wild West,” but... no poetry in the prose. Nothing to leave me wanting more. Cut my losses and ducked out to find something worth “reading.”

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Clayton Bordeniuk

Very easy listening. Good storyline, good flow. Great book on how fast our society breaks down when the power goes out. I Definitely recommend this book.

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