An economic and cultural conflagration is all but inevitable, he argues, and the only way to cope with such a debacle is for Americans to live simple, more localized lives. It's worth noting that Kunstler has been sounding these predictions for almost 15 years, long before it became fashionable. He contributes regularly to the New York Times Sunday Magazine and opinion page and lectures all over the country, and he is featured prominently in the documentary film 'The End of Suburbia.' His two books, 'The Long Emergency' and 'The Geography of Nowhere,' are full of doomed, Spengler-like prognostications for America, and in particular its suburbs, because of our dire dependence on oil. Kunstler is the author of 10 novels, but he is best known as a cultural critic. Meanwhile, a community in Union Grove, a town in upstate New York, grinds out its existence without electricity and running water. A phantom government exists, but nobody can recall the last election. Jihadists have bombed the United States three times, and a paralyzing pandemic with a name that would make Lou Dobbs proud - the Mexican flu - has killed millions. Television, the Internet, anything that poses as the press, has been shut down. Coffee, wheat, black pepper and cinnamon - all gone. Global trade has devolved into wars to reclaim resources. The Earth's resources have been plundered, and the most-prized commodity - oil - is but a vague memory. It seemed fitting, if only because there are no turnpikes in Kunstler's novel, no cars and certainly no gas.

I confess I started reading 'World Made by Hand,' James Howard Kunstler's new dystopian novel, while waiting for gas in a long line off the New Jersey Turnpike.

Kunstler world made by hand