Hope in the Dark

Rebecca Solnit
May 2004     ISBN: 1560258284

WINNER OF THE 2004 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE

In this remarkable work, acclaimed author Rebecca Solnit draws on her life as a writer and activist, on the events of our moment, on our deepest past, to argue for hope--hope even in the dark. Solnit reminds us of how changed the world has been by the activism of the past five decades. Offering a dazzling account of some of the least expected of those changes, she proposes a vision of cause-and-effect relations that provides new grounds for political engagement in the present. Counting historic victories--from the fall of the Berlin wall to the Zapatista uprising to Seattle in 1999 to the worldwide marches against war in Iraq to Cancun in September 2003--she traces the rise of a sophisticated, supple, nonviolent new movement of movements that unites all the diverse and fragmentary issues of the eighties and nineties in our new century.

"In this inspired meditation on the very nature of action and the reasons one thing leads to another, Rebecca Solnit, with her customary intellectual penetration, freshness of expression, and high elegance, finds new springs of hope in dark times."

--Jonathan Schell

"In this extraordinary book, Rebecca Solnit's prose grows poetic wings that enable her to soar to a visionary height. The good news that she brings back is that our struggles--with persistence and courage--are indeed the seeds of kindness."

--Mike Davis

"Move over Joan Didion"

--San Francisco Chronicle

"Can you imagine a cross between Joan Rivers and Simone de Beauvoir? I didn't think so, but no likelier hybrid comes to mind.... Solnit is the real activist deal: the type who gets arrested at nuclear test sites and mans the barricades at the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle. She's also the real freelance intellectual deal: the much rarer type who earns her living generating reams of thoughtful, wide-ranging nonfiction."

--Newsday

Rebecca Solnit's previous books include River of Shadows, Hollow City, As Eve Said to the Serpent, Savage Dreams and Wanderlust: A History of Walking. An activist and cultural historian, she writes about place, environment, politics and culture. Rebecca Solnit is the recipient of the Lannan literary award and lives in San Francisco.