In Home Economics, Berry explores what it means to make oneself “responsibly at home.” As he argues, a measure of the health of the planet is economics—the health of its households.

"Wherever we live, however we do so, we desperately need a prophet of responsibility; and although the days of the prophets seem past to many of us, Berry may be the closest to one we have. But, fortunately, he is also a poet of responsibility. He makes one believe that the good life may not only be harder than what we're used to but sweeter as well." —The New York Review of Books