Books by James Howard Kunstler
World Made by HandThe Long Emergency
The City In Mind
Home From Nowhere
The Geography of Nowhere
Maggie Darling
Other books...
A novel of America's post-oil future.
"A poignant, provocatively convincing novel"
The World Without Us
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The global oil predicament, climate change, and other shocks to the system, with implications for how we will live in the decades ahead. Published by the Atlantic Monthly Press in April 2005. Paperback coming in April 2006.
"What sets The Long Emergency apart from numerous other books on this theme is its comprehensive sweep—its powerful integration of science, technology, economics, finance, international politics and social change—along with a fascinating attempt to peer into a chaotic future. And Kunstler is such a compelling, fast-paced and sometimes eloquent writer that the book is hard to put down.
The American Scientist
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An anthology composed for your reading pleasure. Louis-Napoleon's renovation of Paris; the fiascos of contemporary Atlanta and Las Vegas; Berlin's travails in the 20th century; Cortes Versus the Aztecs in Tenochtitlan; In search of the classical in Rome; and more. Published January 2002.
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Home From Nowhere explores the growing movement across America to restore
the physical dwelling place of our civilization. It offers real hope for
a nation yearning to live in authentic places worth caring about.
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The Geography of Nowhere, my first non-fiction book on the tragic sprawlscape
of cartoon architecture, junked cities, and ravaged countryside where
we live and work. I argued that the mess we've made of our everyday
environment was not merely the symptom of a troubled culture, but one
of the primary causes of our troubles. "We created a landscape of scary
places, and we became a nation of scary people."
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Maggie Darling, A Modern romance. This was my 'Martha Stewart' novel, a lot of fun to write. Set in Connecticut, New York City, and Vermont, the story follows the romantic misadventures of a media goddess celebrated for her domestic skills. It begins at a Christmas Eve party among the wealthy and celebrateded, and ends in a Hartford crack house. It didn't get a very fair shake from the reviewers who (naturally) failed to notice that it was funny. One of my personal favorites.
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Other Books by JHK
(Mostly out of print but some are available through Amazon and the Advanced Book Exchange)
You wouldn't know it, but I actually published a whole bale of novels before I started writing nonfiction about architecture and our human ecology. All of the novels are currently out-of-print. You have to search the flea markets, the used bookshops, or the discontinued merchandise bin of the K-mart if you want to find them. Some are better than others -- it sometimes seems that I wrote them in another life. But for those of you who are interested, here's a roster of them:
The Wampanaki Tales
Doubleday 1979
Kids at a summer camp. Has it's moments but, hey, it's a first novel.
Probably a collector's item.
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The Life of Byron Janes
WW Norton 1983
Story of a rock and roll star thought to be dead but discovered living
an anonymous and reclusive life in a back corner of New England. The
story cuts back and forth between the 1960s and the then-present day
of the narration, which is in the voice of a music journalist who
discovers the rocker. It's a pretty good description of an era now
fading deep into the past. Scenes of original Woodstock festival.
A decent literary performance, but the publisher had no idea
how to bring it to the public's attention.
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A Clown in the Moonlight
St Martin's Press 1981
A marriage farce set on the campus of an artsy progressive Vermont
college. Originally titled "Brain Damge: A Love Story" but
the publisher made me change it. (They thought it evoked an unsavory
image of retards in love.) The few critics who reviewed it clobbered
me for being "just another mouthy college prof in a bad marriage."
Fact was, I'd never taught in a college or been married when I wrote
the book, but I could see in hindsight what a tactical career error
it was. Amusing if you can unearth a copy.
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An Embarrassment of Riches
Dial Press 1985
A favorite. Tour de force historical comedy (1803) about two
bumbling botonists sent into the southern wilderness by Thomas Jefferson
to look for something that isn't there. In the spirit of Louis
and Clark (who make cameo appearences). Replete with wild
Indians, river rirates, the kidnapped son of Louis XVI, the lost colony
of Roanoke, and much more. Still cracks me up.
The cover shown here is the trashy cover art of the paperback edition. The hardcover was much cooler -- an old woodcut of a woman wrestling with an alligator. Will post that soon....
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The Halloween Ball 
Bantam 1987
Another favorite. The story takes place from dawn until late at night
on Halloween in an upstate New York town and revolves sort of cinematically
around the lives of four characters in their 30s -- all men -- who
are colliding with the task of finally growing up one way or another.
A serious tale, but full of funny gags and clever scenes. Strangers
keep optioning it for the movies but it hasn't been made into one
yet.
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Thunder Island
Bantam 1989
By the time I composed this novel, I was getting a little burnt out
from writing one after another to pay the light bill. The story takes
place at a Hamptons-like beach resort town in 1967. It's about
what happens to a New York City kid the summer after he graduates
from high school, with the Vietnam War looming in the background.
Surfing, drugs, young love.
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Blood Solstice
Doubleday 1986
Story about a newspaper reporter who gets mixed up with religious
cult killers. Set in a small, mid-American city. It's narrated
by the reporter and has a nice wacky, hapless quality about it. Loosely
based on my own experience as a reporter back in the 1970s, when I
specialized in investigating religious cult groups. I got to know
quite a few of them and how they operated.
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The Hunt
Tor Books 1988
If the creature is just a legend, then what is trying to kill you?
Ha...!
I wrote this novel back in 1975 when I worked for Rolling Stone in San Francisco, getting up at four o'clock in the morning
to work on it. I couldn't sell the damn thing until 1986 or so -- and then only to a trashy pulp horror publisher. It was originally titled Bagging Bigfoot, which gave you a better idea of its rather antic flavor. One of my biggest career regrets is letting the publishers make me change the title. Sigh....
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