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Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Landscape Wars of the American West
In 1851, a war began in what would become Yosemite National Park, a war against the indigenous inhabitants that has yet to come to a real conclusion. A century later—1951—and about a hundred and fifty miles away, another war began when the U. S. government started setting off nuclear bombs at the Nevada Test Site, in what was called a nuclear testing program but functioned as a war against the land and people of the Great Basin. Savage Dreams is an exploration of these two landscapes. Together they serve as our national Eden and Armageddon and offer up a lot of the history of the west, not only in terms of Indian and environmental wars, but in terms of the relationship between culture—the generation of beliefs and views—and its implementation as politics.
420 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1994
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3091 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Solnit
117 books7,981 followersWriter, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and disaster, including Call Them By Their True Names (Winner of the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction), Cinderella Liberator, Men Explain Things to Me, The Mother of All Questions, and Hope in the Dark, and co-creator of the City of Women map, all published by Haymarket Books; a trilogy of atlases of American cities, The Faraway Nearby, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). Her forthcoming memoir, Recollections of My Nonexistence, is scheduled to release in March, 2020. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at the Guardian and a regular contributor to Literary Hub.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
March 27, 2012
Solnit has a remarkably distinct voice. I found the first part of this, which takes place at the Nevada Testing site to be the most effective. But that's not to say the second part, with its real history (early ethnic cleansing) behind the creation of Yoesmite National Park, doesn't fit under Solnit's umbrella title: Savage Dreams. Solnit's subjects are deeply troubling, nevertheless her voice is a hopeful one that focuses on what the committed individual can accomplish through activism. You may not agree with her, or her methods, but her voice, carefully grounded in facts, along with her clear-eyed sincerity, cannot be lightly dismissed.
December 4, 2024
Trust to Solnit to bind a nuclear test site with the world’s foremost national park so tightly that the two halves of the book could almost be about the same place. I got this at Vroman’s in Pasadena where it was shelved next to some other books on western history I was looking for, and I was glad I looked past the blurb about anti-nuclear protest, which was not immediately appealing to me but was actually profoundly interesting. I was not aware of how many nuclear weapons were detonated on American soil up to the 80s, and certainly wasn’t aware of who paid the price for that. We have attacked ourselves with nuclear weapons far more than we've attacked any other country.
I think it’s a credit to Solnit that her books are impossible to summarize, too interwoven and complete to reduce, so I won’t try. This is just as good as her later works that I’ve tried.
Notes
P. 123 Heisinberg: “Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning. This was a possibility of which Descartes could not have thought, but it makes the sharp separation between the world and the I impossible.” You could take from this observation that natural science does *not* describe nature, only our perceptions of it, but Heisenberg doesn’t seem to abandon that notion. Science is an impure blend of the seen and the seer.
P. 156 Depleted uranium from nuclear reactors is used in military munitions and armaments. Effects on those wielding such weapons and on their targets is debated.
P. 182 “It’s terrifying that we may destroy the land before we learn to live with it, but the process of improvisation, and the murkiness of the future, are exhilarating: the one thing the American landscape promises is that the future will be nothing like the present.” The Ovid quote toward the end of Sandman (“omnia mutantur, nihil interit”) was always a comfort to me as a teenager, though the seeming immutability of the sky was too. Now, as an adult and a Californian, I know the sky is not so secure.
P. 190 “a person owns land in somewhat the sense that a flea owns a dog”
P. 220 The account of Bunnell forcibly relocating the last Miwok people of Yosemite Valley while simultaneously memorializing them is astounding, though familiar. Can’t put it better than Solnit: “Usually annihilating a culture and romanticizing it are done separately, but Bunnell neatly compresses two stages of historical change into one conversation. Bunnell says, in effect, that there is no room for these people in the present, but they will become a decorative past for someone else’s future.” Exactly like the Oakland Zoo destroying some maritime chaparral to memorialize wolves and condors, and the many streets named after the people and organisms they displaced.
P. 236 Early photo technology required such long exposures that not only was movement and activity impossible to capture, but humans were impossible to capture unless intentionally staged. Thus, early landscape photos excluded people by necessity, if not intent.
P. 252 The word “paradise” comes from an old Persian word meaning “walled enclosure” and in the Persian Empire of ~500 BCE referred to a “walled garden”
P. 295 Her indictment of McKibben’s The End of Nature is damning. It’s generally cited as one of the first works to bring climate change into the popular imagination, but it is also an explicit definition of “nature” as that which is separate from humanity, a very Cartesian, European view that Solnit is constantly dismantling, perhaps never more so than in this Yosemite half of the book. I’m fairly sure McKibben included Solnit in his American Earth anthology, so now I’m eager to reopen that to see what he included and how he introduced her. Does he still maintain his definition of nature? [Update: her essay actually closes that book and thus represents the modern response
to Thoreau, which seems like very high esteem from McKibben. He doesn't mention her dismantling of his End of Nature premise at all, though the subject of the essay he did include is still the fallibility of the nature / culture dichotomy]
P. 308 “So the model for all the park preserves of wilderness of pure nature around the world turns out to be no more independent than any other garden, and the deterioration of its ecology is as much a story of a garden gone unweeded as a wilderness civilized.” I haven’t written much in my life but one thing I wrote was on this subject, so it’s always an exercise in humility to read how a master like Solnit expresses these ideas. Still, to pick a nit, as much as Yosemite's big trees and lush meadows contribute to its prototypical status, people go there to gawk at the rocks. Though I guess it’s hard to see the rocks if you’re buried in a dense wood in need of a good burn.
P. 312 the claim that “naming” was a euphemism for “having sex with” in the story of Genesis is pretty extreme, and apparently debatable. The following passage on the sexual language used to describe western landscape is a bit more self-evident.
P. 313 Novato (a town in Marin County) is named after a Miwok chief who was in turn named after a Christian saint.
P. 315 Whitney named Mt. Whitney after himself, but only after giving another peak the same name when he thought *that* was the highest. What a turd.
P. 319 the name “Yosemite” means “killer” or “some among them are killers” in Miwok, in reference to the fact that the indigenous people living in the valley at the time of contact were a mixed group of Miwok and Paiute, and apparently most of the Miwoks despised the Paiutes.
P. 323 “It is conquerors and invaders, not the conquered or invaded, who have lost their roots, their ties, their sense of place.” Too often it’s both. Reminded of Le Guin’s refrain about explorers who don’t return being mere adventurers. On p. 277 she writes, “To walk toward the problem is an act of responsibility, an act of return,” which Le Guin could have written herself. I wonder if they ever talked. In the popular imagination California has a culture of escape and reinvention, one that I play into as an immigrant (from Connecticut, mind you, but that’s still a pretty un-Californian place), but I wonder how Le Guin and Solnit might think differently as people who grew up here.
I think it’s a credit to Solnit that her books are impossible to summarize, too interwoven and complete to reduce, so I won’t try. This is just as good as her later works that I’ve tried.
Notes
P. 123 Heisinberg: “Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning. This was a possibility of which Descartes could not have thought, but it makes the sharp separation between the world and the I impossible.” You could take from this observation that natural science does *not* describe nature, only our perceptions of it, but Heisenberg doesn’t seem to abandon that notion. Science is an impure blend of the seen and the seer.
P. 156 Depleted uranium from nuclear reactors is used in military munitions and armaments. Effects on those wielding such weapons and on their targets is debated.
P. 182 “It’s terrifying that we may destroy the land before we learn to live with it, but the process of improvisation, and the murkiness of the future, are exhilarating: the one thing the American landscape promises is that the future will be nothing like the present.” The Ovid quote toward the end of Sandman (“omnia mutantur, nihil interit”) was always a comfort to me as a teenager, though the seeming immutability of the sky was too. Now, as an adult and a Californian, I know the sky is not so secure.
P. 190 “a person owns land in somewhat the sense that a flea owns a dog”
P. 220 The account of Bunnell forcibly relocating the last Miwok people of Yosemite Valley while simultaneously memorializing them is astounding, though familiar. Can’t put it better than Solnit: “Usually annihilating a culture and romanticizing it are done separately, but Bunnell neatly compresses two stages of historical change into one conversation. Bunnell says, in effect, that there is no room for these people in the present, but they will become a decorative past for someone else’s future.” Exactly like the Oakland Zoo destroying some maritime chaparral to memorialize wolves and condors, and the many streets named after the people and organisms they displaced.
P. 236 Early photo technology required such long exposures that not only was movement and activity impossible to capture, but humans were impossible to capture unless intentionally staged. Thus, early landscape photos excluded people by necessity, if not intent.
P. 252 The word “paradise” comes from an old Persian word meaning “walled enclosure” and in the Persian Empire of ~500 BCE referred to a “walled garden”
P. 295 Her indictment of McKibben’s The End of Nature is damning. It’s generally cited as one of the first works to bring climate change into the popular imagination, but it is also an explicit definition of “nature” as that which is separate from humanity, a very Cartesian, European view that Solnit is constantly dismantling, perhaps never more so than in this Yosemite half of the book. I’m fairly sure McKibben included Solnit in his American Earth anthology, so now I’m eager to reopen that to see what he included and how he introduced her. Does he still maintain his definition of nature? [Update: her essay actually closes that book and thus represents the modern response
to Thoreau, which seems like very high esteem from McKibben. He doesn't mention her dismantling of his End of Nature premise at all, though the subject of the essay he did include is still the fallibility of the nature / culture dichotomy]
P. 308 “So the model for all the park preserves of wilderness of pure nature around the world turns out to be no more independent than any other garden, and the deterioration of its ecology is as much a story of a garden gone unweeded as a wilderness civilized.” I haven’t written much in my life but one thing I wrote was on this subject, so it’s always an exercise in humility to read how a master like Solnit expresses these ideas. Still, to pick a nit, as much as Yosemite's big trees and lush meadows contribute to its prototypical status, people go there to gawk at the rocks. Though I guess it’s hard to see the rocks if you’re buried in a dense wood in need of a good burn.
P. 312 the claim that “naming” was a euphemism for “having sex with” in the story of Genesis is pretty extreme, and apparently debatable. The following passage on the sexual language used to describe western landscape is a bit more self-evident.
P. 313 Novato (a town in Marin County) is named after a Miwok chief who was in turn named after a Christian saint.
P. 315 Whitney named Mt. Whitney after himself, but only after giving another peak the same name when he thought *that* was the highest. What a turd.
P. 319 the name “Yosemite” means “killer” or “some among them are killers” in Miwok, in reference to the fact that the indigenous people living in the valley at the time of contact were a mixed group of Miwok and Paiute, and apparently most of the Miwoks despised the Paiutes.
P. 323 “It is conquerors and invaders, not the conquered or invaded, who have lost their roots, their ties, their sense of place.” Too often it’s both. Reminded of Le Guin’s refrain about explorers who don’t return being mere adventurers. On p. 277 she writes, “To walk toward the problem is an act of responsibility, an act of return,” which Le Guin could have written herself. I wonder if they ever talked. In the popular imagination California has a culture of escape and reinvention, one that I play into as an immigrant (from Connecticut, mind you, but that’s still a pretty un-Californian place), but I wonder how Le Guin and Solnit might think differently as people who grew up here.
September 6, 2022
4.5 stars.
Very well written travelogue and interesting histories and geography around the Nevada Nuclear Test Site and its impact on the Western Shoshone. The second half of the book is about the Mariposa and Yosemite Wars of the 1850s.
Very well written travelogue and interesting histories and geography around the Nevada Nuclear Test Site and its impact on the Western Shoshone. The second half of the book is about the Mariposa and Yosemite Wars of the 1850s.
April 7, 2008
Solnit does this brilliant thing many writers (including me, yet) can't get away with: she writes rambling narratives in which seemingly disparate topics collide by the end of a chapter into a sensemaking that no linear, expectable essay could possibly achieve. Book 1 is set mostly in Nevada over the 20th century, amidst the indigenous fight for sovereignty and the fallout of nuclear devastation. It reminds me of Susan Griffin's Chorus of Stones, except Solnit is there, and tells us so. I like the strong first person presence. Second half is an interpretation of white people's meaning-making of Yosemite; it becomes a history of the state at large, too. Living in CA, it's satisfying to read this challenge to conventional imagery of our revered natural icon, and to find out layers of history of places that are now erased of all but central valley monoculture--prisons and food fields and ruler-straight rivers.
June 25, 2023
I think it was interesting I just don't enjoy nonfiction very much. Sometimes it was a complete info dump with not that much organization which made it hard to follow but I enjoyed all of the narrative parts.
January 10, 2022
Rebecca Solnit blows me away.
August 28, 2023
An interesting read, however I found the Great Basin part of the book much more compelling than the Yosemite portion. Perhaps because I knew less about the Great Basin before I picked this up. This was also a good book to read after Annie Proulx’s Close Range and I saw the Oppenheimer movie while reading the portion on the Great Basin. I loved the little “my brother” moments.
September 14, 2021
Two stories loosely joined - one of the nuclear test site in Nevada and the environmental/indigenous activism against nuclear testing, one of the development - and idea - of Yosemite National Park. I think I prefer this author at essay length, but the explorations of these subjects through the lens of her own engagement was beautiful/ terrifying/ thought-provoking all the same.
April 10, 2020
Important concepts, but read like a textbook.
April 2, 2016
A stunningly intelligent, if meandering walk through a complicated landscape of deserts and nuclear weapons, political activism, Native American rights, our view of nature and the history of Western expansion. Solnit writes with a blend of personal, philosophical and journalism observation that can at times be scattered, but do add up to a brilliant whole. It's like talking to one of the smartest people you know, but whose conversation jerks from topic to topic, with connections only he or she can see. It's the first of her books, and I suspect her writing style was honed over time. But if you have even a passing interest in the West, nukes or nature, I think you're going to find this fascinating and worthwhile.
August 25, 2022
I can’t rate anything that Rebecca Solnit wrote lower than 4 stars. I just love her writing so much, and I find it resonating with me enormously every time. All the knowledge she provides in this book is extremely valuable, and it blows my mind that to this day Nevada Test Site history is so little known. The only disadvantage of the book for me, was how it became so much like a boring history school book when the Yosemite part started. I just couldn’t relate to this part too much. It doesn’t change the fact, though, that I gained a substantial knowledge about this place that I knew almost nothing about earlier. Overall, a worthy read!
May 30, 2010
I went into this book hoping for a detailed history of the struggle over land usage in the West. What I got was an antinuclear testing political book that touched lightly on the history and focused more on meanderings on the author's family (which usually didn't apply to the focus of the book), making a bunch of leftist stereotypical statements that were more leftist than even I prefer, mixed in with some but not enough useful history about nuclear bomb testing in Nevada. Not what I was looking for, so I did not finish it.
July 7, 2007
Skillfully crafted dual narratives deconstruct the mythologized, pornagraphized Yosemite Valley which was in fact the cultivated garden of the native population eradicated to create a consumable "wilderness" intellible to expansionist and romanticist sensibilities. Particularly poignent is the anecdote about the displaced chief, brought back into the park and told that Tioga Lake had been named for him. Morosely, he replied, "it already has a name." Whew!
February 3, 2024
haven’t historically been a big Solnit guy but this one did it for me! 5 stars for the first half — you can tell that’s where her heart and her curiosity are. Yosemite stuff felt a little thinner. read over the course of a month, from a camp chair in the shade of Santa Elena Canyon to underneath my quilt with covid…what a nice feeling, to read a book that connects the dots of the places running through your head.
June 30, 2011
Surpisingly readable account of things unbearable to think about.
I will add to this before too long...see also quotes in updates.
I will add to this before too long...see also quotes in updates.
April 10, 2016
Rich, perceptive, and horrifying as usual.
August 19, 2022
One of the best writers about the significance of Place, Solnit's account of the torrid turf battles in the western States and the legacy of testing nuclear weapons informed my mind and my soul.
December 28, 2025
these quotes <3
“ TO ME THE PLEASURE OF BEING IN THE DESERT IS A CEREBRAL one, and a sublime one, far from the sensual pleasure of being in a place where my body belongs. In the hilly coastal country where I grew up, you can walk to what you can see. Whenever I am driving across a desert, anywhere in the Basin and the Southwest, I find myself looking at the nearest mountains and imagining what it would take to walk to them. At first it would just be walking, one foot after another, the simplest and purest of our acts of volition. Walking in its rhythm and naturalness is the closest of all the acts we choose to the acts we don't: to breathing and the beating of our hearts, the other rhythms that direct the rhythm of walking. Of all the things we learn, it is the most natural, like birds learning to fly, and of all of them the act that becomes most unconscious. Walking is the only way to measure the rhythm of the body against the rhythm of the land.
And so I picture myself walking, legs like a pair of scissors across a basin as flat as a paper map to the mountains pressed against the horizon, and I wonder how long it would take for those mountains, that horizon, to get bigger, and how big they would get before I would get near enough. I walk, and then become mesmerized by walking, and then exhausted by it, in that state of drunken calm that long exertion brings, and then come states of delirium and extremity, where it is oneself rather than only the landscape that is beyond what's known. Where I come from, you can walk to what you see, because it isn't very far away, and because you can always find water, shade, or a road out. Here, though, I might die of thirst or sunstroke or the cold of night between the point where I begin thinking about the mountains pressed against the horizon and the point where I arrive at them—the mountains where there is shade, and where the aridity fades as the elevation rises. I might continue walking, but leave a dehydrated body behind me, between creosote bushes, where no one but the ravens and coyotes will notice. I know I am out of my element here, where my heart and my eyes are enraptured, but my body is afraid. This is not a landscape that tolerates mistakes or vagueness. You must know where you are going and how to get there, and there is usually far from here. When I eye the distances, my respect for the desert nomads grows. Part of what I see out there is my mortality.”
“ TO ME THE PLEASURE OF BEING IN THE DESERT IS A CEREBRAL one, and a sublime one, far from the sensual pleasure of being in a place where my body belongs. In the hilly coastal country where I grew up, you can walk to what you can see. Whenever I am driving across a desert, anywhere in the Basin and the Southwest, I find myself looking at the nearest mountains and imagining what it would take to walk to them. At first it would just be walking, one foot after another, the simplest and purest of our acts of volition. Walking in its rhythm and naturalness is the closest of all the acts we choose to the acts we don't: to breathing and the beating of our hearts, the other rhythms that direct the rhythm of walking. Of all the things we learn, it is the most natural, like birds learning to fly, and of all of them the act that becomes most unconscious. Walking is the only way to measure the rhythm of the body against the rhythm of the land.
And so I picture myself walking, legs like a pair of scissors across a basin as flat as a paper map to the mountains pressed against the horizon, and I wonder how long it would take for those mountains, that horizon, to get bigger, and how big they would get before I would get near enough. I walk, and then become mesmerized by walking, and then exhausted by it, in that state of drunken calm that long exertion brings, and then come states of delirium and extremity, where it is oneself rather than only the landscape that is beyond what's known. Where I come from, you can walk to what you see, because it isn't very far away, and because you can always find water, shade, or a road out. Here, though, I might die of thirst or sunstroke or the cold of night between the point where I begin thinking about the mountains pressed against the horizon and the point where I arrive at them—the mountains where there is shade, and where the aridity fades as the elevation rises. I might continue walking, but leave a dehydrated body behind me, between creosote bushes, where no one but the ravens and coyotes will notice. I know I am out of my element here, where my heart and my eyes are enraptured, but my body is afraid. This is not a landscape that tolerates mistakes or vagueness. You must know where you are going and how to get there, and there is usually far from here. When I eye the distances, my respect for the desert nomads grows. Part of what I see out there is my mortality.”
January 25, 2025
“They were beautiful complexes of rusty pattern on the pale face of the rock, strange figures and lines and jagged bolts and circles.” Savage Dreams, by Rebecca Solnit, unpacks the history of two distinct but intertwined locations which serve as a fulcrum for understanding American history in the West, and the “hidden wars” which define and determine that area and the country as a whole. Firstly, Solnit describes her time with other activists at the Nevada Test Site, protesting against nuclear testing and other atrocities to the land and people; this soon also incorporates a history of atomic warfare (reaching out to Europe and elsewhere, and spanning decades) and indigenous oppression, especially against the Western Shoshone people. Solnit then moves to Yosemite, and considers the acts and legacy of James Savage upon indigenous rights and the land in one of America’s most famous, beautiful, revered landscapes. It all comes “full circle” in the end, returning to the Nevada Test Site in temporary triumph, hopeful for an environmental and social politic that would protect the land and the people to whom it has always belonged.
March 21, 2025
This book surprised me with how disappointing it was. The hope had been to understand more about the indigenous peoples of the West and their value of land through conflicts in Nevada and California. Instead, it discussed a great deal of the personal experience of the author in protesting nuclear testing and then relayed a lot of history of indigenous peoples of Yosemite as a parallel story. The tone between the two of them was markedly different and the author conveys a continual mild disgust for Yosemite that became felt wearying for the reader as the book progressed. Granted, history is difficult to write, and Solnit is stronger with more personal narrative in the first half. I will likely keep the book because about sixty pages mentions source material and context for indigenous peoples of Yosemite if I can ignore the tone. If you are reading for a similar purpose, Tending the Wild by Kat Anderson would be a better read. If you are interested in activist experience around the Nuclear Testing Site in the early 1990s, I would say that is a decent read.
February 6, 2018
This book is quite dense but filled with information and interesting connections that prompted much thought during and after reading.
My main complaint is the confusing timeline, especially in the first part of the book. Solnit describes her experiences transgressing the Nevada Test Site and working with activists. But along the way she diverges to explain their journey and maybe even another encounter she had with that activist before going back to the main timeline. Confusing and not really necessary.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. My favorite chapter was her discussion about our ideas of what “natural” and “wild” is and the origin of these.
My main complaint is the confusing timeline, especially in the first part of the book. Solnit describes her experiences transgressing the Nevada Test Site and working with activists. But along the way she diverges to explain their journey and maybe even another encounter she had with that activist before going back to the main timeline. Confusing and not really necessary.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. My favorite chapter was her discussion about our ideas of what “natural” and “wild” is and the origin of these.
January 4, 2025
One of my favorite books I’ve ever read. I think this book is what took the West from a space I consider my home to a space I consider a critical object of inquiry where so many contemporary environmental issues are played out. Solnit’s prose is beautiful—this book is everything I seek to replicate in my own writing. The ease with which she alternated between lush descriptions of landscape and poignant critical reflection is incredible, and makes for a reading experience that is both informative and aesthetically satisfying. Everyone who lives out west needs to read this.
December 31, 2018
I learned a ton reading this! And although, as a 25+ year old book, it certainly didn't feel topical, it does feel relevant (because it turns out we haven't solved these problems), and I was struck by how absent some of these concerns -- nuclear testing -- are from our (my?) radar, while others -- native sovereignty -- feel much more pertinent.
Read
September 2, 2022Parts of this were really powerful - I learned a lot about nuclear testing and the beginning of the tourism industry to national parks through the history of Yosemite. Other parts felt like name dropping of people I'm not familiar with (the book was originally published in the early 90s). Part of my efforts to select more books talking about the western U.S. and its history.
November 10, 2023
In the wake of growing academic concerns surrounding AI and "objectivity," I hope the future of academic writing can be as thoughtful, comparative, literary, and well-captured as this classic work by Solnit. Refusing to be voiceless, this book is among some of the best written non-fiction I've ever read. Political writing + nature writing, I look forward to reading more by Solnit.
August 7, 2017
Explains a LOT about the current way of thinking of federal/private lands and their use. God, I love her writing.
October 10, 2017
This was one of the best books I've ever read.
May 22, 2018
Rebecca Solnit, and this book in particular, is an American Studies major’s dream.
January 28, 2020
I loved it!
December 7, 2020
So much good information in this book. She really did a lot of research on our idea of landscape and how it's changed over time.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews