Living in the Long Emergency

Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward

By: James Howard Kunstler

Narrated by: David de Vries

Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Forget the speculation of pundits and media personalities. For anyone asking "Now what?" the answer is out there. You just have to know where to look.

In his 2005 book, The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler described the global predicaments that would pitch the USA into political and economic turmoil in the 21st century - the end of affordable oil, climate irregularities, and flagging economic growth, to name a few. Now, he returns with a book that takes an up-close-and-personal approach to how real people are living now - surviving The Long Emergency as it happens.

Through his popular blog, Clusterf**ck Nation, Kunstler has had the opportunity to connect with people from across the country. They’ve shared their stories with him - sometimes over years of correspondence - and in Living in the Long Emergency: Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward, he shares them with us, offering an eye-opening and unprecedented look at what’s really going on "out there" in the US - and beyond.

Coming from all walks of life, the individuals you’ll meet in these pages have one thing in common: their stories acutely illustrate the changing realities real people are facing - and coping with - every day. In profiles of their fascinating lives, Kunstler paints vivid, human portraits that offer a “slice of life” from people whose struggles and triumphs all too often go ignored.

With personal accounts from a Vermont baker, homesteaders, a building contractor in the Baltimore ghetto, a white nationalist, and many more, Living in the Long Emergency is a unique and timely exploration of how the lives of everyday Americans are being transformed, for better and for worse, and what these stories tell us both about the future and about human perseverance.

©2020 James Howard Kunstler (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

A lot to think about excellent book

This book has told me where I plan to travel this spring and summer. I will be moving in the next six months that is for sure

A funny Thing Happened On the Way to the American Dream

Reality caught up with the “cliche.” Now what? If what we are truly experiencing is actually a nightmare, we need to wake up! Mr Kuntsler has a mind like no others. He conveys the hard realities of our Long Emergency straight from the hip. You may not agree with all of what he writes, but lose your chains of illusion and consider what is obvious. None of us will make it out alive. So, make your voices heard and your actions productive.

if it's 2020 or later, you need to read this book.

For just a moment, suspend your hope or your firm belief that things in the Western world will return to normal.
Listen with an open mind, at the possible ways things may very well play out.
And prepare yourself and your family once finished.

With respect

Interesting people treated with respect, large ideas handled concisely, hope for man in the future.

Must listen

Be prepared! The long emergency is coming whether we want it to or not.
Do it

great as aways

It is too bad this book would not be required reading in schools. I would love to here the debates in the classrooms

Food for thought

Useful information and presented well. We are all fumbling along with the realization that things are not quite right. Mr Kunstler gives voice and lends certainty that we are not crazy. We are truly in the throws of a long emergency as we go from crisis to crisis. He highlights several lives who have chosen alternative lifestyles in response to this growing reality as a way of providing some possible solutions to redirect personal lives towards more simple living. I myself have been on this journey and found the book reassuring. (I own and operate a sheep farm.) I do like how he laid out the book in digestible sections without meandering. I feel that this book provides interesting insight. I do not agree with it all, but arguments are compelling. At least it will make you pay more attention to what is going on. Side Note...I too grew up in the Washington DC suburb of Dale City in a military family as one of the documented individuals. Found that interesting.

Wrong about America being broke

Mentions that we can't have National Healthcare because "we're broke" while not mentioning in the same paragraph that we seem to have unlimited funds for never ending wars and tax breaks for millionaires. I'm a student of "Modern Money" (MMT) so this was a bit much for me.

I do agree with the Author that we are using up everything on a finite world and this is going to bite us in our posteriors.

The Future ...

Clearly spelled out. What we all have to look forward to as the years roll by.

I will buy the hard copy to study and savor.

The book prepared a bed of hot coals for my imagination to take flame. Like Yogi Berra’s statement about predictions, we can only guess the general azimuth of our culture’s future. This book gives us a north to set our compasses.
Part 1 was a summary of the original book. But a good concise description of our predicament. We may be able to extend this lifestyle a while but this will decay as more people drop out of this modern life.
Part 2 was a great look at Americans adjusting to these changing times. These dropouts can be the seed of a new America.
In Part 3 Jim hit it out of the park. He amalgamated the thoughts and concerns I’ve had since the early 1970s.
I’m a 65 year old retiring mining / civil engineer. I understand resource depletion. The strength of our society will dictate the velocity of the decline.
My retirement may be easy or not. But we oldsters can spend the time to prepare our people to meet the future head on.
The reader was good but I wish Jim would read the audiobook. His pacing and intonation would be perfect.