Against the Machine: The hidden Luddite tradition in literature, art and individual lives by Nicols Fox, Island Press, $25, ISBN 1559638605
SIX or seven years ago, a gentle woman from the state of Maine, with Quaker leanings and a hat to match, excitedly flagged down a gaggle of hippies with handcarts in a picturesque country lane in Cornwall. “Are you the Benders?” she asked. “Some call us that,” one replied. And so, for her, they were.
She was Nicols Fox. They were a few of the self-declared Dongas Tribe, who from 1993 to 1995 protested against the building of a…
