Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2181 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Kunstler's name is mostly associated with nonfiction works like The Long Emergency, a bleak prediction of what will happen when oil production no longer meets demand, and the antisuburbia polemic The Geography of Nowhere. In this novel, his 10th, he visits a future posited on his signature idea: when the oil wells start to run dry, the world economy will collapse and society as we know it will cease. Robert Earle has lost his job (he was a software executive) and family in the chaos following the breakdown. Elected mayor of Union Grove, N.Y., in the wake of a town crisis, Earle must rebuild civil society out of squabbling factions, including a cultish community of newcomers, an established group of Congregationalists and a plantation kept by the wealthy Stephen Bullock. Re-establishing basic infrastructure is a big enough challenge, but major tension comes from a crew of neighboring rednecks led by warlord Wayne Karp. Kunstler is most engaged when discussing the fate of the status quo and in divulging the particulars of daily life. Kunstler's world is convincing if didactic: Union Grove exists solely to illustrate Kunstler's doomsday vision. Readers willing to go for the ride will see a frightening and bleak future. (Mar.)
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Customer Reviews

Nope. It is NOT a realistic depiction, nor is it a good read!
To mix metaphors - I had great expectations and instead found a shipwreck on the island of apathy.

First, I will give credit where due - the protagonist is well described and I can empathize with his feelings, depression and apathy. That's basically it for the positive.

It's as if Kunstler did a minimal bit of research and then zero critical thinking on how a society would revert to a more primitive form of social organization once the technological foundation of that modern society was completely removed.

The entire premise of the story revolves around apathy - personal and societal. I find that not only abhorrent, but also unrealistic. If - or maybe it's when - our technology and oil based society fails because of lack of cheap oil and its benefits - travel - long and short distance, cheap heat, chemicals, electrical generation etc., we will find alternatives - whether it's coal derivatives, electrical or some other technology that will only be viable when oil is expensive and scarce.

Does this mean that society will keep up its frenetic pace of change and "progress"? Not at all. Especially if one adds into the mix terrorists with nukes and rampant epidemics that destabilize world society and kill hundreds of millions, if not billions. Society will most likely have to revert to an earlier era where technology is much simpler and supportable for those needs that are "Made by Hand". But that does not mean that some semblance of `modern' technology won't remain and be maintained as viable - steam trains is but one example.

Another example - Kunstler has most (an implied ~99%) of the cars recycled for their steel. Ok, not a bad idea if there isn't any gasoline from foreign oil fields being imported any longer. But... it's fairly simple to convert a gas engine to run on alcohol or even "wood gas" (Google that and you'll be amazed). So there'll be some sort of short range transportation made possible by individuals with an engineering proclivity. Will this sort of thing be wide spread like today's trucks and autos? Not likely nor practical. But it will exist in some form. Why? My answer is human nature. Find the unknown and unworkable and make it work.

Another glaring hole in my opinion is the fact the Kunstler allows the electricity to come on at random intervals and for short random times. If trains, planes and automobiles are non-functioning and non-existent, then where the heck are the electrical generators in this grand scheme? If society can't make a wood fired steam train work, how can a complex power grid be maintained? If apathy is the watchword of the decade, then who the heck is climbing the power poles to connect the power lines? Furthermore, if most of the trucks and autos have been recycled for their metal content, why haven't the power lines been recycled for their copper and aluminum content? I can't willingly suspend my disbelief to cover that large and glaring of a gap.

Guns. Though never specified, it's implied that this story takes place 10 to 15 years after a `crash' where the whole world just stops functioning. Given the number of guns in America in 2008, given the rural setting depicted in the story, the near absence and rarity of guns is one more point where it appears that Kunstler has discarded critical thinking. Even though the population has been devastated by virulent disease, gun violence seems out of the norm and relatively rare. Rare enough to shock the protagonist when it appears early in the narrative. I'd posit that regardless of the number of people that succumbed to the uncontrolled diseases, gangs of thugs would have been, or are still, ravaging the country far and wide, scrounging for food, more guns and women to rape. Survivors would have had to deal with these gangs of thugs time and again - or be killed by them. I would suggest that violence would remain distasteful to thinking and feeling humans, but it would not be as shocking as Kunstler has portrayed it.

I could detail a half-dozen other oversights or outright goofs, but suffice to say that this was not an enjoyable post-apocalyptic story. Way too many gaps of logic to be remotely probable. And for my money that's what makes these sorts of tales enjoyable or not. And this one was not either probable or enjoyable.

World made by hand
It was a good read. The writer manipulated my assumptions of the characters in a subtle, yet effective way. Also, I enjoyed the detail of description that people in the story went to cope with life with the lack of today's infrastructure. Thought provoking.

Read "The Long Emergency First"
You need to read "The Long Emergency" by Kunstler before you read this book. The former is his projection of the breakdown of the hydrocarbon based society we live in today "World Made By Hand" is a fictionalized account of the society which follows the collapse of that world. The book is believable and adheres to the authors vision of the future. It's a good work of science fiction and provides some "food for thought" along the way.