The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness by Rebecca Solnit

by Rebecca Solnit

The incomparable Rebecca Solnit, author of more than a dozen acclaimed books of nonfiction, brings the same dazzling writing to the twenty-nine essays in The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness . As the title suggests, the territory of Solnit’s concerns is vast, and in her signature alchemical style she combines commentary on history, justice, war and peace, and explorations of place, art, and community, all while writing with the lyricism of a poet to achieve incandescence and wisdom. Gathered here are celebrated iconic essays along with little-known pieces that create a powerful survey of the world we live in. In its encyclopedic reach and its generous compassion, Solnit’s collection charts a way through the thickets of our complex social and political worlds. Like the women who've pioneered before her—Sontag, Didion, and Dillard—her essays are a beacon.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Feminism, Philosophy, History, Memoir, Travel

Unknown Binding

First published August 12, 2014

About the author

Writer, 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.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Radicals often speak as though we live in a bleak landscape in which the good has yet to be born. Not only is there an alternative, but it’s here and always has been.

This collection of 29 essays, previously published in a variety of literary venues, demonstrates Rebecca Solnit's virtuosity as an compassionate intellectual, a keen and critical observer of the human condition, and a preeminent force in American letters.

Solnit is neither a politician nor an academic. She is not a researcher nor an environmentalist by training. She is a public citizen with a heightened sense of justice, an activist who advocates for the most vulnerable through her stunning ability to see patterns, to make shape from chaos, to order the world so that the rest of us can understand and find hope in the midst of utmost despair. Through her sharp and tender dialogue, Rebecca Solnit brings us to see what we have turned away from because it's just too much to take on. And through her words, we can see our way past the turmoil into possible answers. Into hope.

The essays in The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness range from the Arab Spring to climate change, from the crumbling of Detroit to the devastation in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and in Japan after the trio of disasters in March 2011. Solnit takes these faraway or far-removed disasters and brings their relevance home to the reader. The geography she covers is so wide-ranging that the book comes with a map to aid in tracking Solnit's travels, yet it is the map of heart and intellect that leaves the most searing impression.

How many times did I grab my partner's arm while we sat side-by-side, to read him an excerpt, to insist that he read this essay or that, until I finally pushed the book at him, declaring it a must-read, a life-altering exploration into 21st century social justice? Because a few years have passed since the original publication of many of these essays, Solnit's wondering about the power of the Occupy Movement, the lasting effects of the Arab Spring, the masses rising up against the power of Google in a public transportation protest, take on an almost-poignant aspect. From the perspective of hindsight, we can see how Solnit's predictions play out and how her most fervent optimism fizzles in the face of American ambivalence, greed, and short attention spans.

Essays that stand out most strongly:

Solnit's scathing rebuke of mass media and its portrayal of disaster survivors, turning the depictions of 'looters' on their heads, in In Haiti, Words Can Kill

“If you grab that stuff, are you a criminal? Should you end up lying in the dirt on your stomach with a cop tying your hands behind your back? Should you end up labeled a looter in the international media? Should you be shot down in the street?”

Climate Change is Violence

Climate change is global-scale violence against places and species, as well as human beings. Once we call it by name, we can start having a real conversation about our priorities and values. Because the revolt against brutality begins with a revolt against the language that hides that brutality.

Inside Out, or Interior Space

Maybe it’s important to make a distinction between what gets called material and what real materialism might be. By materialistic we usually mean one who engages in craving, hoarding, collecting, accumulating with an eye on stockpiling wealth or status. There might be another kind of materialism that is simply a deep pleasure in materials, in the gleam of water as well as silver, the sparkle of dew as well as diamonds, an enthusiasm for the peonies that will crumple in a week as well as the painting of peonies that will last. This passion for the tangible might not be so possessive, since the pleasure is so widely available; much of it is ephemeral, and some of it is cheap or free as clouds. Then too, the hoarding removes the objects — the Degas drawing, the diamond necklace — to the vault where they are suppressed from feeding anyone’s senses.

The Butterfly and the Boiling Point, a reflection on the Arab Spring and the cause of revolutions in general.

That the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can shape the weather in Texas is a summation of chaos theory that is now an oft-repeated cliché. But there are billions of butterflies on earth, all flapping their wings. Why does one gesture matter more than another? Why this Facebook post, this girl with a drum?

Rebecca Solnit's writing is lucid and luminous, her opinions informed and passionate, her optimism cautious and grounded, her inspiration undeniable. She holds our faces to the fire, forces us to recognize the danger and the beauty, and helps us see ways to help ourselves and yet be citizens of the world. Truly one of our greatest contemporary thinkers, activists, writers and revolutionaries. Highly recommended.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are so many facets to Ms. Solnit's writing and I feel terribly inept in my own, that I fear that I cannot do this book justice via review. She writes about things that are important and has a gift for melding the history and science of her subjects with humor or plea as appropriate. When I first considered the book, already inclined to buy it because Trinity University Press publishes books that resonate with me, two passages sold me, "It's true what you heard about macrame. Partly some mutant version of a craft tradition and partly something for the fidgety hands and wandering minds of the drugged...to create gratuitous clutter." & "Houses are cluttered with wishes, the invisible furniture on which we keep bruising our shins.". There are so, so many ideas and ideals in this book and it's author- I wholeheartedly recommend it if you have interest in environmental issues, political efficacy and movements, gardening, Henry David Thoreau (beautiful thoughts on sisters at the end of that essay), our western states (water was considered a problem by Major John Wesley Powell), and how we see the world and other people.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

You will forgive me for rating all of Solnit's books 5 stars... she's just so good: so real, so evocative, so much of this time on earth. This, her latest collection of essays, is so rich it's difficult to represent it here, save to say I will read this again and again before I'm finished with it. There are essays on so many things, from the meltdown in Fuskushima to the meltdown in the Icelandic economy; about climate change, Hurrican Katrina and the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico; the creepy sexual politics of the 1970s, the drug war in Mexico (possibly the strongest piece in the book, actually), a fabulous piece on Thoreau's family... a lot of scope, a lot of crises, and yet the sense of hope and humanity in her voice is unwavering throughout. So highly recommended, as are all of her writings.

[Jenn C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my introduction to Solnit's writing, and now all I can say is I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do to read all of her stuff. I fell in love with her mind, her writing style, and she left me wondering why I don't know more about, well, everything. Her writing is stimulating and challenging in the sense she leaves you wanting to know more, wanting to do more, to contribute more to this world we inhabit. Her fluid themes of hopefulness and her ability to always pull the positive of a situation is inspiring. I read about this book on the blog Brain Pickings. The author of the blog listed it as one of her top books of 2014. I want to send her a thank you for introducing me to Rebecca Solnit's writing.

[julieta · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is all over the place. And by this I mean physically all over the place. From Iceland, to Japan, to San Francisco, to Detroit, to New Orleans, to México, she has opinions on many themes, and while I found some of them inspiring, others were a little pretentious.

I really enjoyed the good parts, her thoughts on Thoureau being one of my favorites, but those essays on Iceland I just could not get myself interested in, and the one apologizing to Mexico (me being a Mexican) I found very gratuitous and annoying.

Si even though some of her essays were very inspiring and took current affairs to good levels of thought, I did like it better when she spoke of close to home affairs. When she speaks of domestic problems she is much more convincing to me. I still find her to be a wonderful essayist.

[George Ilsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of diverse essays. Especially enjoyed the Iceland pieces, and the Arctic expedition. Learned a lot about mercury and gold mining in California —which makes me wonder how much mercury was used in the Klondike gold rush, but is not talked about — and persists to continue to pollute that watershed.

A strong collection of essays. Solnit is a major talent; however, her writing feels stronger when she is observing outside the US.

[Kate Savage · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always appreciate Solnit's ideas, heart, and sense of humor. But what really sets her apart for me is her mastery of sentences. Lord I love a good sentence. And Solnit writes them breezy and brisk, she takes you by the arm and you're off.

I especially loved the essay "Inside Out, or Interior Space (and Interior Decoration)," which explores our obsession with private houses and gardens while we allow the commons to erode. I feel this intensely as I age and watch erstwhile-gutterpunk friends now maximizing their home's curb appeal. Out of the breakfast nooks, into the streets!

[Surabhi Tewari · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first book written by Rebecca Solnit that I read and I must say I loved her writing. Although the essays were on topics such as drugs, real estate, Mexico, etc. the language was so poetic that I actually kept a marker to highlight paragraphs that I could quote and revisit. Also, the depth of the writing was quite impressive. From now on she is definitely one of my favourites.

[Jericha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to adore this collection of Solnit's essays, as I have so much of her writing in the past, but I...didn't. There is much here to admire, and certainly enough to love to make it worthwhile, but there's also a pervasive didacticism I didn't find in her other writings. The essays vary from long-form internet polemics to absolute magical gems, and overall I'm certainly not sorry I took the time -- but I'll admit that I wanted more from the collection (what a name! what a delicious name!) than I ultimately got.

The essays that frustrated me the most read like discarded extracts from her truly lovely and moving book A Paradise Built In Hell, which I wildly and unequivocally recommend : she sounds, to be honest, like exactly the kind of disgruntled, righteous progressive she actually discourses against in one of the later essays. The tone of DON'T YOU AGREE HOW AWFUL THIS IS in some of them was difficult for me to take, and I count myself on the leftmost wing of even her highly radical adoring readership. Even when I already agree with her - maybe especially when I already agree with her, actually - I found some of the pieces frankly a little dreary. But those that shine glitter and glow, as her work so often does, with that particular gleam of fiercely empowered and highly-informed hopefulness that she expresses so beautifully in so much of her work. I would NOT recommend this as a first foray for anyone into her wonderful stack of works, but come to this one after some of her earlier works, when you can pick and choose a little more wisely, and you won't be sorry.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m giving this a 4.5. While I didn’t love every one of the 30 or so essays here, all were interesting, and the ones I loved, I loved a lot. I won’t bother listing my favorites because I think every reader will have their own if they like this sort of thing: thoughtful, insightful, and well-written pieces on economics, art, grassroots political movements, war, social justice, community, and the environment. Those that resonant deeply will depend upon one’s particular interests and passions, but they’re all worth reading.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this collection in 2020, 6 years after it came out and 10-15 years after many of the essays were originally published, gave it an oddly dated feeling. Some of the discussions are still timely, some feel surprisingly dated, and most, to me, were in-between. I guess this is common - post-2016, some of the complaints about the Bush, to say nothing of Obama, eras just seem...smaller (certainly not all!). Anyway, occasionally the writing was beautiful or the topic was profound, so there's plenty here - but altogether, this was not my favorite of Solnit's writing.

[Magdelanye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading is also travelling, with the eye along the length of an idea. p210

The encyclopedia is a perfect format for RS to give free range to the prodigious scope of her interests.
Not that she is a dilettante, for her attention is deep as it is wide.

For us, perhaps, the Golden Calf is the belief that the current economic system produces wealth rather than poverty. p107

RS doesn't just fling a statement down without considerable backup. Her exquisite sense of justice finds its way off limits, and some of her opinions may startle, vindicate or annoy you, possibly in the same essay. I do find her analysis of the 60's limited; and it does rather annoy me. Other than that, I find her a woman who has the ability to untangle the sticky webs obscuring the heart of a situation, a truthsayer.

...not only is another world possible, but it has been here all along,invisible, should we care to look...
The world could be so much better if more of us were more active on behalf of what we believe and love. pp140

[Spiros · Rating 4 out of 5]

This took awhile. My reading of this widespread collection coincided with returning to work in the midst of COVID-19, which was certainly a source of preoccupation. Places I normally read (buses, restaurants, coffee shops) have been off-limits, and my evenings have been largely spent watching videos on YouTube. But this was a very worthwhile read, with some essays having an almost uncanny relevance to The Way We Live Now (starting to read "Concrete In Paradise", an essay about the Bay Area's ties to the Military Industrial Complex, immediately after walking past the bunkers in the Presidio would be an example).

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will read every essay she writes if I come across it on the internet. I did tire of them all together in a book, though. To her credit, the essays are well-chosen to reflect recurring themes.

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rebecca Solnit is reclaiming non-fiction. She maintains that the word describing the genre is dumbed-down. I am still discovering her range and versatility. She explores how we tell stories about "our history, our powers, and our possibilities.”

The title of this anthology arises from her belief that nonfiction is spacious territory that she roams: from realms of "investigative journalism to prose poems; manifestos to love letters, from dictionaries to packing lists." There are thirty essays here. "Essays explore; they also define; every essay is an entry in the author's personal encyclopedia."

The topics range widely: the cultural history of California; the Occupy movement; how uprisings occur just when they do and how each cause contains multiples of causes; politics and policies and Silicon Valley, Iceland, the violence of climate change; what follows ruin after disaster; carnival and resistance in New Orleans. No matter what the topic, though, it is embedded in a sense of place. Instructing that a place is an intersection of many disparate elements that, she observes, pass through, whirl around, mix, dissolve, and explode in a fixed location. Her approach to writing about place (which she does, brilliantly, in this Encyclopedia) is to acknowledge and explore those elements that we often study separately. She lists such things that co-exist in place: ecology, democracy, culture, storytelling, urban design, individual life histories, and collective endeavors. In order to write wisely and with authenticity about place, it’s important to allow those elements to dissipate, dissolve, and blend; then, from the blending, comes the real story.Or maybe where the real story can begin. These dimensions add finely textured layers to her topics. They can disorient a reader; as well, they can explode a reader’s perspective. Place can become dizzying in its dimensionality.

It’s uber mind-mapping--not the best comparison, but the closest I can get. Ms. Solnit releases her topics as if they are boomerangs and you can depend they will return to you, exploded, expanded, explained. In Solnit’s writing, the whole is exponentially greater than the sum of its parts.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as the civil disobedience protests in Baltimore were unfolding, which was a rather apt time. A large chunk of the essays in Solnit's "encyclopedia" examine the myth of looting. In the process she exposes the media and cultural fixation on property over people, arguing that in most cases (and it's important to note that her case studies are natural disasters, the Haitian earthquake and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans) during catastrophes civil society emerges to fill in the vacuum left by the environmental disruption. Most people, she notes, are "looting" to feed or care for their families and communities. She goes on to say that while things like TV's do also get taken, it's a small price to pay, and that attempting to protect property requires redirecting resources away from more critical needs. In her examples, these needs largely amount to rescuing people affected by natural disasters, but one can easily apply it to something like Baltimore. The difference there might be that focusing on "looting" diverts public attention from the much more critical issue of systemic racism.

The book is about more than "looting." Solnit is never short of reliably left-wing critiques running the gamut of environmental hazards to public shaming of rapacious capitalists. If there is a strong unifying element through the book it's an exploration of the power of civil society. She's working towards a rallying cry. Unfortunately, some of the more hopeful moments (Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring) maybe didn't go on to the be the utopian ideal Solnit is clearly hoping for.

Often when I read systemic critiques it feels like there's nothing to do with my anger after the fact. Everything can start to feel hopeless, but Solnit does an admirable job of balancing the fatalism and rage with moments of hope. I give her kudos for that!

If you liked this, make sure to follow me on Goodreads for more reviews!

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started this book and frankly ran out of gas before getting deeply into it. Now it is due and I must return it to the library.

The opening essay, "Cyclopedia of an Arctic Expedition," is breathtaking. It is structured as a set of encyclopedia entries - alphabetical, of course, and complete with "see" and "see also" entries - which you'd think would be staid and dry. But the writing is gorgeous and I found myself reading both forward and backward to connect all the observations. I can envision using this narrative structure as a journaling technique during future travel.

The beginning of "Rattlesnake in Mailbox" had me laughing out loud. Let me quote the entire first paragraph here:

It's true what you heard about macrame. Partly some mutant version of a craft tradition and partly something for the fidgety hands and wandering minds of the drugged, macrame was also the means to create harnesses from which a million planters were hung from a million ceilings to create gratuitous clutter. You can think of macrame as some vernacular extension of 1960s soft sculptures by Bruce Conner, Eva Hesse, Robert Morris, and Claes Oldenburg, but its aesthetics had grown monstrously. There was something quintessentially 1970s about these pendulous burdens - obscuring views and dripping foliage - something that tied them to the fern bars of the era and to the overall aesthetics of horror vacui. This era of shag rugs and feather-bedecked roach-clip hair ties rivaled the Victorians when it came to clutter, ornament, jewelry, print, pattern, texture, flourish, tassels, fringes, tendrils, frizz, dangly bits, lace, laces, buttons, and other distractions for the eye. (32)

I originally filed this book on my bookshelf titled "abandoned" but then decided to create a new, but related, shelf: "interrupted." I'll return to Solnit. Nonfiction is tricky for me and I have to hit it as just the right time, which doesn't happen to be now.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I should've abandoned the book upon a minute's reflection on its pretentious title.

I'm definitely kicking myself that I didn't abandon it after reading the incredibly pretentious introduction. She sounded so utterly full of herself that I was surprised she hadn't capitalized the word "writer."

I plugged along, and thought the opening essay, about her trip to Antartica, was moderately interesting, even though I didn't fall in love with one sentence. Then, the second essay was a rather dated one about the Arab Spring, and she seemed way out of her depth as well as continuing to sound off-puttingly stuck-up without the slightest shred of evidence for such airs.

So, I quit, halfway through the second essay. Onto better writers. I'd never heard of her before; I guess I know why, now…

[Tiah]

I became a big fan of Solnit after reading The Faraway Nearby. Her essay, 'Men Explain Things To Me' is a bookmarked favourite. ( http://bit.ly/2dBw2kr )

My interest in this collection specifically came about after reading Brain Pickings piece on Solnit's essay, 'We're Breaking Up.' http://bit.ly/1PRSLGf (Read the essay on Solnit's website here: http://bit.ly/2e4MGuu ). Of course, what is covered in this book goes far beyond this essay. Solnit's subjects are wide and her interests deep. A great thinker of our time.

*Please note there are no quotes posted as this book contains three sickie-books worth of notes.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

a collection of , i think, previously released articles mostly dealing with environmental and social justice. solnit's strengths are her passion for justice and willingness to see things from the 'little guy's" point of view. and she seems to do lots of research and is good at synthesizing facts into opinions. do you have that "uncle" who voted straight reagan reagan bush bush bush bush and acts like it's still 1973? this book and opinions will make him apoplectic.

[Corie Sanford · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard for me not to love everything Solnit writes. She has a fluid and perceptive way of interweaving literature, history, and psychology; one of my favorite essays in this collection connects the lonely homemaking of Martha Stewart with gender and home in The Odyssey and religious retreats both modern and past. Solnit is intelligent, well-researched, but she allows questions to connect and lead her work, rather than assumptions about meaning.

[Rebekah Cluff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had heard good things about Rebecca Solnit’s writing for a while before I decided to pick up one of her books. My interest was piqued when I saw the topics that would be discussed in this collection of essays. Henry David Thoreau, country music, natural disasters, urban gardening, war, technology, and more. Unfortunately shortly after I began reading I realized that her writing style doesn’t really speak to me. I like nonfiction to be more straightforward and objective, but her writing tends to be meandering and reflective. She reposes on minute topics for too long or over-describes things. To be clear she is brilliant and her accolades are well deserved; she’s done and seen incredible things and she provides insightful commentary on a broad range of topics. But for some reason I never felt a strong urge to keep reading this book. It took me two years and I had to really push myself through the last 70 pages. It felt like a chore to pick it up. When I compare that to the last book I finished (Caliban and the Witch) and how engaging Federici’s analysis was, it makes me think Solnit’s work just isn’t my cup of tea. I’m glad so many people felt enriched by this book (and honestly I can say I was too, I definitely learned a lot) but I also like to *enjoy* reading, and for me personally this wasn’t very enjoyable.

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Governments fear their people. They fear we will exercise our power to change them, and they fear we will panic.” The penultimate book by Rebecca Solnit that I had left to read was The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness, a 2014 miscellany of essays from the Arctic to the Zapatistas. The final, Zapatista-focused essay, ‘Revolution of the Snails’, was amongst my favourites in this particular collection, for its hopeful insistence on the slow and steady revolution, for real lasting change that comes from work and perseverance and the grace of time and human growth. From new ground in Iceland and Japan to Solnit-mainstays such as New Orleans, Nevada and San Francisco, the breadth of these essays is as wide geographically as thematically, engaging with art and culture, with the domestic and the public, finance, Elvis, Thoreau, violence, resistance, and the vast importance of making all human experience visible to as many eyes as possible. Patiently incendiary as always, Solnit’s writing continues to circle itself, returning to past observations with new and renewed purpose, building always towards increasing truth.

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, Rebecca Solnit. Ever eloquent, full of heart but completely rational. Of firm resolve, but willing to be forgiving (when appropriate). She successfully marries the dreamlike movement of an enchanting story with the lucidity of a razor sharp analysis. Every. Single. Time. What I admire most about her is that she doesn’t sound angry, some of her writing is fueled by fire, but there’s no hate behind it. She’s one of the few people that always seems to write about politics in a healthy way. She’s pulling up the blinds to show us how things are, how they should be, and what we can do about it without hate or anger ever showing their ugly faces. She tells the stories of forgotten people doing beautiful acts in moments where all we could see is destruction, of people fighting every day just to live their lives and hoping that life will be easier for their descendants. She nods suggestively in the direction where the real show is happening while we’re being misdirected and gently helps us correct course when we’re wrong. We don’t deserve her, yet we need her.
Serious author crush.

[Donovan Colegrove · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eclectic and Revolutionary

This book is a collection of essays by one of my favorite authors that essentially deals with the relationships we have between each other and the world we occupy. It asks us to consider whether we want to go on occupying the same world or attempt to remake it into something better. Large sections of this book are fairly bleak and depressing, but there is hope to be found in odd places - the poor revolutionaries of Mexico, the downfall of the rich and powerful in Iceland, the urban gardens of Detroit. I love Solnit's writing and thoughts on culture and society. It forces me to consider how life could be different and helps me spot lies I have been told and believed. Any book that does that is worth reading.

[Cheryl Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the insightful thoughts about macrame ""It's true what you heard about macrame. Partly some mutant version of a craft tradition and partly something for the fidgety hands and wandering minds of the drugged, macrame also means to create harnesses from which a million planters were hung" to an investigation into the truth about Cyclone Katrina to a thought provoking analysis of the word 'looter' to considerations about Iceland's politics Solnit brings her incisive mind and eloquent prose.

Each essay requires time to absorb it. And a chance to reread it.

Great stuff. I'm keen to read any post Trump essays.

Wonderful.

[Sarah Lugthart · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me Adam Curtis was stuck in my mind a lot this year, so I think it was good I countered it with some of the ideas of Solnit. I especially was touched by her articles on the aftermath of the earthquake in Japan, and her ideas on alternative economies and the situation in Iceland gave me a more broad perspective. Her article on urban gardening made my rethink my position: do I hide between the nice things surrounding me or should I use this position more to make a difference. Curtis makes me think I can't, Solnit makes me think I can.

[Margaret B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of the essays here are of a very particular time, but Solnit being herself they are excellent nonetheless, even though I don’t have nearly ad many dog-eared pages in this collection as in some of my favorites from her. Some are grim but they are all informative and interesting. But “Arrival Gates,” about her visit to the main Inari shrine in Kyoto after her post-tsunami visit to Japan, is a masterpiece. One of my favorites essays ever, hands-down. You can find it online also…and you should. You won’t regret it.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read Solnit's "Men Explain Things To Me" and my response was, "More. Please!" I love these essays. For one, some are centered on San Fransisco and I lived there many lifetimes ago when it was still an ideal place for a struggling single mother to raise a mixed-race child. And then there's the way Solnit, expressing herself sublimely, makes you feel really pissed off at the status quo while managing to suggest reasons for joy and hope. More. Please!

[Dara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rebecca Solnit is an amazing author, but these are heavy essays requiring time to parse, and process. Part travel diary, part anti-war narrative, part aggressive environmentalism, these essays speak to the tragedy that is the current state of the world, and to the hope that can be found in those fighting back.