Kirkpatrick Sale facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Kirkpatrick Sale
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Sale in 1980
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| Born | June 27, 1937 Ithaca, New York, U.S.
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| Education | Cornell University (BA) |
| Occupation | Author |
| Spouse(s) |
Faith Apfelbaum
(m. 1958; died 1999) |
Kirkpatrick Sale (born June 27, 1937) is an American author. He writes a lot about ideas like decentralism (meaning power spread out), protecting the environment, and how technology affects us. People have called him a leader of the Neo-Luddites. These are people who are careful about new technologies. He is also known for his ideas about smaller governments.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Sale grew up in Ithaca, New York. He said this place greatly influenced his ideas and beliefs. His brother, Roger Sale, was a professor who studied literature.
Kirkpatrick Sale went to Cornell University. He studied English and history there and graduated in 1958.
While at Cornell, he was an editor for the student newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun. In 1958, Sale was part of a student protest. They were protesting university rules about male and female students spending time together. This protest was even mentioned in a book by his friend, Richard Fariña.
Career as an Author
Sale first worked as a journalist. He wrote for magazines like New Leader and The New York Times Magazine. Later, he became a writer who worked for himself.
His first book was about Ghana, a country in Africa. His second book, SDS, was about a student group from the 1960s called Students for a Democratic Society. This book is still seen as an important source about that group.
In 1968, he joined other writers in a protest. They refused to pay certain taxes to protest a war. Sale has written many books since then. These books explore ideas like spreading out power, protecting local environments, and the history of the Luddites. The Luddites were a group in the past who protested against new machines. Sale has also written for well-known magazines like Mother Jones and The Nation.
Sale has given many of his writings and notes to Cornell University. People can look at these materials there to learn more about his work.
Kirkpatrick Sale's Views
Thoughts on History
In his 1990 book, The Conquest of Paradise, Sale wrote about Christopher Columbus. Sale believed Columbus was an imperialist who wanted to conquer lands from his first trip.
A historian named William Hardy McNeill reviewed Sale's book. McNeill said Sale wanted to show Columbus as cruel and greedy. However, McNeill also felt Sale's book picked parts of history to fit his own modern ideas. McNeill thought both those who praised Columbus and those who criticized him sometimes made him seem too simple.
Views on Technology
Sale has often written about technology and has doubts about it. He has called personal computers "the devil's work." Sometimes, he would even smash a computer at his public talks.
In 1995, Sale wrote a book called Rebels Against the Future. This book was about the Luddites and their fight against the Industrial Revolution. He debated with a technology writer, Steven Levy, about the good and bad sides of the computer age.
Sale knows a lot about old American songs from the 1910s to the 1960s. He was part of the folk music movement in the 1960s. He even met Bob Dylan once but said he didn't like his music at the time.
In 1995, Sale made a public bet with Kevin Kelly. Sale predicted that by the year 2020, there would be big problems in the world. These included money issues, wars between rich and poor, and environmental problems. A judge later decided that Kelly had won the bet. Sale initially disagreed but later paid the agreed amount.
Ideas on Secession
Sale is seen as an important thinker for the idea of secession. Secession means a part of a country breaking away to form its own government. He believes that many large empires are breaking up, like the Soviet Union did. He thinks smaller governments can be better.
In 2004, Sale helped start the Middlebury Institute. This group studies ideas like separatism and self-determination. Sale is the director of this institute. In 2006, they held the First North American Secessionist Convention. This was a meeting of groups who wanted their regions to become independent. They wrote a statement of their beliefs called the Burlington Declaration.
In 2007, The New York Times interviewed Sale about another secessionist convention. Sale said that "the mistakes are small" when governments are small. He explained that if you don't like your country, you could try to make your area independent. This way, you could stay where you are but live under a different government. This convention got attention from media around the world.
Sale also wrote the introduction for a book by Thomas Naylor in 2008. The book was called Secession: How Vermont and all the Other States Can Save Themselves from the Empire.
Personal Life
After college, Kirkpatrick Sale married Faith Apfelbaum in 1958. Faith worked as an editor for famous authors like Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. Faith passed away in 1999. In 2019, Sale married his long-time partner, Shirley Branchini.
Books by Kirkpatrick Sale
- The Land and People of Ghana. Lippincott (1963)
- SDS: Ten Years Toward a Revolution. New York: Random House (1973).
- Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and Its Challenge to the Eastern Establishment. New York: Random House (1975).
- Human Scale. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan (1980).
- Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision. San Francisco, Calif.: Sierra Club Books (1985).
- Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy. New York: Knopf (1990).
- Green Revolution: The American Environmental Movement, 1962-1992. New York: Hill and Wang (1993).
- Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age. Boston, Mas.: Addison Wesley (1995).
- Why the Sea Is Salt: Poems of Love and Loss. San Jose, Calif.: Writers Club Press (2001).
- Fire of His Genius: Robert Fulton and the American Dream. Los Angeles, Calif.: Free Press (2001).
- After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination. Duke University Press (2006).
- Emancipation Hell: The Tragedy Wrought by the Emancipation Proclamation 150 Years Ago. Sale (2012).
- Human Scale Revisited. Chelsea Green (2017).
- Collapse of 2020. Outskirts Press (2020).
- No More Mushrooms: Thoughts on Life Without Government. Autonomedia (2021).
Book Contributions
- "Self-Sufficiency." In: Buying America Back, edited by Jonathan Greenberg and William Kistler. Tulsa, Okla.: Council Oak Books (1992), pp. 555-567.
