Like E. B. White and Noel Perrin, Wendell Berry writes in the country, and he writes mainly about country life, but he owes nothing to either of these writers. His spiritual ancestor is Henry David Thoreau, and his Recollected Essays, though looser in structure than Walden, resembles it in several respects. Like Thoreau, his prose style is clear and utterly free of affectation. He read Thoreau as a young man, and was clearly influenced by him, but his prose style may have come to him as much from his upbringing as from reading Walden….

Like Thoreau, one of Berry's fundamental concerns is working out a basis for living a principled life. And like Thoreau, in his quest for principles Berry has chosen to simplify his life, and much of what he writes about is what has attended this simplification, as well as a criticism of modern society from...