The Harrows of Spring

August 22, 2016
Kunstler returns to his fictional post-oil world in this sequel to World Made By Hand. This time he focuses on the inhabitants of Union Grove, N. Y., who have decided to live a simpler, agrarian way of life after civilization was destroyed by its own decadence. It is a constant struggle to pool resources and the novel begins with Union Grove in the scant season between winter and spring, "the six weeks want." Robert, the ad-hoc mayor, is supporting his girlfriend through her grief over her daughter's sudden death. The town doctor's existential crisis has morphed into drug and alcohol addiction. And one of the few well-supplied farmers has resorted to nailing dead bandits to trees to ward off future attacks. Supplies and morale are low when members of the self-proclaimed Berkshires People's Republic waltz into town, singing "This Land Is Your Land." Their talk of a socialist federation is revealed to be a protection racket: when not grandstanding about privilege and diversity, the "Berkies" kill cattle and burn down barns. They're assisted by a band of pillagers and a misanthropic sniper. These caricatures are too inelegant to be satire, and not pointed enough to be parody. Fans of Kunstler's work might enjoy the ongoing saga of Union Grove; new readers will find it hard to jump in.

June 15, 2016
This fourth and final installment of Kunstler's speculative World Made by Hand series envisions a post-apocalyptic America struggling to put itself back together through a fractious convergence of political, ideological, and religious forces.As spring approaches, the upstate New York town of Union Grove is facing its usual shortage of food, what with the trade route to Albany having been blocked by all-powerful, feudal-minded landowner Stephen Bullock. And there are even more crucial needs, such as a vaccine to save the 8-year-old daughter of town mayor Robert Earle's girlfriend from tetanus (his wife died of encephalitis)--and more sperm-bearers to repopulate the area. Such is the shortage of men that physically endowed movement leader Flame Aurora Greengrass picks up Elam, a none-too-bright war veteran, in a bar. (Her father, Glen Ethan Greengrass, one-time public radio personality, founded the superliberal, all-inclusive, anti-establishment Berkshire People's Republic.) Though marauding gangs lurk outside of town, ready to do in innocent people--not to mention innocent cows--there is relatively little violence here. Attention is paid to yeoman efforts by Robert's son Daniel to start a newspaper, with Karen Grolsch, the "duck boss" at a local farm, as his aspiring reporter. The book's reflection of America has a kind of fun-house mirror effect in producing scenes that echo a distant American past while speaking in a contemporary tongue. "The USA is toast," utters one nonbeliever. There are plentiful pop cultural references--including The Big Lebowski, Pete Seeger, and Meet the Press. "We don't have any use for Jesus," says Flame. "We're not in the twelfth century."Having another go at concepts and themes he explored in previous books, Kunstler delivers an entertaining if not overly captivating account of an American society reinventing itself in the wake of a terrorist attack.

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June 1, 2016
Kunstler (A History of the Future, 2014) concludes his speculative World Made by Hand quartet in Union Grove, in upstate New York, as the town slowly recovers in a lawless land hurled back to the old ways of candles and horses. Returning home with a price on his head, Daniel decides to revive the long-defunct newspaper as a conflict brews between the town, including the highly disciplined members of the New Faith Covenant Brotherhood Church of Jesus, and wealthy and ruthless plantation owner Stephen Bullock. But a new threat soon unites them: the Berkshire People's Republic. With a former NPR station host as their erstwhile leader, their shtick couldn't be more politically correct, but something is amiss. In a deliberate and suspenseful tale spiked with suffering and violence, rough justice and love, Kunstler avidly describes exactly how his resourceful characters provide for themselves, celebrating the handmade and bashing our environmentally disastrous culture of waste, even as he dramatizes the tragic loss of modern medicine. A slyly folksy, caustically hilarious, unabashedly proselytizing, and affecting finale in a keenly provocative saga.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2016

Noted for his work on the energy crisis--he's given many TED Talks and was profiled in The New Yorker--Kunstler offers the fourth and final volume in a series of visionary novels begun with cult-favorite, 70,000-copy-selling World Made by Hand. In Union Grove, an upstate New York town in a future that feels like the 19th century, representatives of a crusading antiestablishment group arrive even as a local plantation owner closes down the all-important Hudson River trade route.

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