A Kentucky farmer, poet, novelist, essayist and conservationist, Berry has been a persistent critic of large-scale industrial agriculture—which he believes to be a contradiction in terms—and a champion of environmental stewardship and sustainable agriculture. Wendell Erdman Berry was born on August 5, 1934, in Henry County, Kentucky, where his family had farmed for four generations. Although he learned the farmer's skills, he did not wish to make his living as a farmer but as a writer and teacher. He earned his B.A. in English at the University of Kentucky in 1956 and an M.A. in 1957. He was awarded a Wallace Stegner writing fellow at Stanford University (1958–1959), where he remained to teach in the English Department (1959–1960). He spent the following year in Italy on a Guggenheim fellowship. In 1962 Berry joined the English...