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The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change
Rebecca Solnit offers a thrilling survey of the sheer breadth and scale of social, political, scientific, and cultural change over the past three quarters of a century.
In this sequel to her enduring bestseller Hope in the Dark, Solnit surveys a world that has changed dramatically since the year 1960. She argues that, despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history, change is not a possibility, it is an inevitability, and the nature of that change is determined by who participates and how.
The changes amount to nothing less than dismantling an old civilization and building a new one, whose newness is often the return of the old ways and wisdoms. In this rising worldview, interconnection is a core idea and value. But because the transformation has happened in so many disparate arenas, and within a longer arc of history, the scale of that change is seldom recognized.
While the backlash of white nationalist authoritarianism, Manosphere misogyny, and justifications for callousness, selfishness, economic inequality, and environmental destruction collectively drive individualism and isolation, the elements of this new world are related in their vision of more inclusion, equality, interconnection. This new vision embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, and indigenous and non-Western ideas, particularly Buddhism, as well as breakthroughs in the life sciences and neuroscience, pointing toward a more interconnected, relational world.
In this sequel to her enduring bestseller Hope in the Dark, Solnit surveys a world that has changed dramatically since the year 1960. She argues that, despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history, change is not a possibility, it is an inevitability, and the nature of that change is determined by who participates and how.
The changes amount to nothing less than dismantling an old civilization and building a new one, whose newness is often the return of the old ways and wisdoms. In this rising worldview, interconnection is a core idea and value. But because the transformation has happened in so many disparate arenas, and within a longer arc of history, the scale of that change is seldom recognized.
While the backlash of white nationalist authoritarianism, Manosphere misogyny, and justifications for callousness, selfishness, economic inequality, and environmental destruction collectively drive individualism and isolation, the elements of this new world are related in their vision of more inclusion, equality, interconnection. This new vision embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, and indigenous and non-Western ideas, particularly Buddhism, as well as breakthroughs in the life sciences and neuroscience, pointing toward a more interconnected, relational world.
160 pages, Paperback
First published March 3, 2026
About the author
Rebecca Solnit
119 books8,252 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 117 reviews
October 23, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and Haymarket Books for the arc. Rebecca Solnit offers a vision of hope that is a balm during these political times. The way in which the idea is presented, interconnectedness etc, is uniquely Solnit.
She doesn’t tell us to not be afraid, but in the tapestry she weaves, she gives the reader a chance to take a step back and view the present as a part of the same garment that holds the pasts and upon which the future will be woven.
Interestingly, this volume of hope and social change (including climate activism) actually made me more curious about the natural world. Intentionally or not, this volume has sparked my curiosity about indigenous movements and their impact on our modern thinking.
If you need a light in the dark, The Beginning Comes After the End is a great choice.
She doesn’t tell us to not be afraid, but in the tapestry she weaves, she gives the reader a chance to take a step back and view the present as a part of the same garment that holds the pasts and upon which the future will be woven.
Interestingly, this volume of hope and social change (including climate activism) actually made me more curious about the natural world. Intentionally or not, this volume has sparked my curiosity about indigenous movements and their impact on our modern thinking.
If you need a light in the dark, The Beginning Comes After the End is a great choice.
April 16, 2026
I love Rebecca Solnit’s positive perspective. I listened to the audiobook which is narrated by Solnit herself. It was wonderful, it was as if we were together in the same room having a conversation. I felt myself slow down and lean in as she says in her quiet soft voice, “We have stories, they are seeds with which to plant forests of possibility.”
Solnit reminds us that “History is full of things that once seemed unlikely only our adjustment to them makes us forget how unforeseen or transgressive or transformative when they first appeared.”
She also says that “It is easier to see the old world dying than the new world being born. But beginnings are what come after endings.” These were exactly the words I needed to hear.
“Amnesia can normalize the present while erasing the changes that led to it by the possibility of changing it again which is why memory and history pose threats to authoritarian regimes.” It’s no surprise that historians such as Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder have such a following – they are teaching us from history and clearly laying out what is happening now. People want to understand.
So many people today, in my view, particularly since the pandemic, think in the here and now, focused on the short term and get mired in current dramas. However, it is vital that we give ourselves the time and space to take a step back and view the bigger picture, as it will help us find perspective, realize the component parts and scope of the issue, so we can define longe range goals.
“If knowledge is power, memory and perspective are among its most important aspects. Only in the long view can you see the patterns emerging, the way the present builds on the past, the way past surprises guarantee more surprises are coming.”
Another thing I liked was Solnit’s idea on how we can realize that change has already taken place, and move forward to build on that positive change, when we have something to measure it by. “If you don’t see time on the scale of change you don’t see change, if you don’t remember how things used to be you don’t know they’re different than they were and how that unfolded.”
This is an important recurring theme of the book: “Everything is connected.”
I tend to agree with this statement especially in hindsight. “Perhaps a mistake of 1960s rights movements was believing that changing the law was enough. Subsequent decades would demonstrate that changing the culture is also necessary because you’re never really equal under the law when you’re unequal in the society.”
A startling thought that I realized is absolutely true: “Indigenous American attitudes are likely to be far closer to the reader’s own than seventeenth century European ones.” Solnit quotes Potawatomi professor Robin Wall Kimmerer several times in this book. She is an author whose writing I have truly enjoyed and I appreciate her work on botany in relation to Native American traditions and her demonstration of how everything is connected.
This makes sense, as people are more able to adjust to small incremental changes that occur over time: “Incremental social change can go deeper and last longer than sudden regime change.”
Solnit states: “If like me, you lived through the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, you can never discard hope. I’ve seen social miracles in my life, ones that have stunned me, the courageousness of ordinary people in a struggle.”
“The radical uncertainty of the future arises from how we’re making the future in the present by how we show up, how new ideas amplify and become realities, but it’s the past that shows us the possibilities, how the world was changed.”
I loved Solnit’s statement that, “You can cut down the flowers but you can’t stop the spring.” You can take away people’s rights, hem them in with arbitrary rules, keep them impoverished, but you can’t take away their imaginations, their ideas, their dreams.
What makes Solnit’s heart sing: “I see promising signs ‘seeds’ in how so many young people regard both their own gender and their sexual orientation as fluid or just not something needing definition, in a rising generation used to coexisting with people of other races, and religions, and origins; in the confidence of young women in their own rights in ways my generation lacked; in widespread awareness of the real history of the Americas and the presence of Indigenous people and nations, and new growing attachment to the natural world and wild places; in an ethic of kindness towards animals and a sense that capitalism is both cruel and destructive and there are other better ways to arrange things.”
From the Acknowledgments: “Great work makes most sense as part of a collective conversation and reinvention, each individual effort a contribution to the grander project.” Personally, I'm seeing a move from the individual endeavor and 'me first' to more of a collaborative 'We're all in this together' kind of mentality that is gaining momentum. It gives me hope.
Finally, Solnit tells us: “This is a book about things that happened only because people showed up, only because people believed the world could be different, only because people became the forces for change, sometimes by joining together, sometimes by chasing down new frameworks of possibilities and telling the world about them, only because people didn’t give up when it looked like they were losing, only because they married the wildest idealism to the staunchest pragmatism.”
Solnit reminds us that “History is full of things that once seemed unlikely only our adjustment to them makes us forget how unforeseen or transgressive or transformative when they first appeared.”
She also says that “It is easier to see the old world dying than the new world being born. But beginnings are what come after endings.” These were exactly the words I needed to hear.
“Amnesia can normalize the present while erasing the changes that led to it by the possibility of changing it again which is why memory and history pose threats to authoritarian regimes.” It’s no surprise that historians such as Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder have such a following – they are teaching us from history and clearly laying out what is happening now. People want to understand.
So many people today, in my view, particularly since the pandemic, think in the here and now, focused on the short term and get mired in current dramas. However, it is vital that we give ourselves the time and space to take a step back and view the bigger picture, as it will help us find perspective, realize the component parts and scope of the issue, so we can define longe range goals.
“If knowledge is power, memory and perspective are among its most important aspects. Only in the long view can you see the patterns emerging, the way the present builds on the past, the way past surprises guarantee more surprises are coming.”
Another thing I liked was Solnit’s idea on how we can realize that change has already taken place, and move forward to build on that positive change, when we have something to measure it by. “If you don’t see time on the scale of change you don’t see change, if you don’t remember how things used to be you don’t know they’re different than they were and how that unfolded.”
This is an important recurring theme of the book: “Everything is connected.”
I tend to agree with this statement especially in hindsight. “Perhaps a mistake of 1960s rights movements was believing that changing the law was enough. Subsequent decades would demonstrate that changing the culture is also necessary because you’re never really equal under the law when you’re unequal in the society.”
A startling thought that I realized is absolutely true: “Indigenous American attitudes are likely to be far closer to the reader’s own than seventeenth century European ones.” Solnit quotes Potawatomi professor Robin Wall Kimmerer several times in this book. She is an author whose writing I have truly enjoyed and I appreciate her work on botany in relation to Native American traditions and her demonstration of how everything is connected.
This makes sense, as people are more able to adjust to small incremental changes that occur over time: “Incremental social change can go deeper and last longer than sudden regime change.”
Solnit states: “If like me, you lived through the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, you can never discard hope. I’ve seen social miracles in my life, ones that have stunned me, the courageousness of ordinary people in a struggle.”
“The radical uncertainty of the future arises from how we’re making the future in the present by how we show up, how new ideas amplify and become realities, but it’s the past that shows us the possibilities, how the world was changed.”
I loved Solnit’s statement that, “You can cut down the flowers but you can’t stop the spring.” You can take away people’s rights, hem them in with arbitrary rules, keep them impoverished, but you can’t take away their imaginations, their ideas, their dreams.
What makes Solnit’s heart sing: “I see promising signs ‘seeds’ in how so many young people regard both their own gender and their sexual orientation as fluid or just not something needing definition, in a rising generation used to coexisting with people of other races, and religions, and origins; in the confidence of young women in their own rights in ways my generation lacked; in widespread awareness of the real history of the Americas and the presence of Indigenous people and nations, and new growing attachment to the natural world and wild places; in an ethic of kindness towards animals and a sense that capitalism is both cruel and destructive and there are other better ways to arrange things.”
From the Acknowledgments: “Great work makes most sense as part of a collective conversation and reinvention, each individual effort a contribution to the grander project.” Personally, I'm seeing a move from the individual endeavor and 'me first' to more of a collaborative 'We're all in this together' kind of mentality that is gaining momentum. It gives me hope.
Finally, Solnit tells us: “This is a book about things that happened only because people showed up, only because people believed the world could be different, only because people became the forces for change, sometimes by joining together, sometimes by chasing down new frameworks of possibilities and telling the world about them, only because people didn’t give up when it looked like they were losing, only because they married the wildest idealism to the staunchest pragmatism.”
March 10, 2026
For reminding us how far we've come, and also have to go.
March 15, 2026
I am surprised to have not discovered Rebecca Solnit until recently. In her new book, The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change, Solnit dares to make connections between positive changes happening around the world. She doesn't sugarcoat what's happened and what continues to happen. Instead, she connects the dots globally so we can see a clear path to a better tomorrow—a wonderful book. I listened to Solnit narrate on the audiobook version from hoopla.
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March 9, 2026"There is a way to tell the story of who we were in that fall of 2024 in terms of electoral politics that is, to put it mildly, dismal and discouraging. But deeoer currents of change are at work. This era is not one in which everything is fine and all ancient wrongs have been righted, but it is one in which important parts of a society, maybe a civilization, have changed profoundly, even while the right is trying to change them back. The most profound change is in worldview, when it comes to how settler-colonialists recognize and understand Indigenous presence and rights, and so many other foundational realities about our world, about gender, around race, around injustice and equality, around nature itself and the science that explains it. The practical, tangible changes are consequences of these changed views.
Our world has changed more than almost anyone imagined, in ways both wonderful and terrible, often in ways no one anticipated, and the sheer profundity of change in the past guarantees that this change will continue, that stability is not an option, but participating in directing change might be, if we recognize it.
...
There are many fragments to this mosaic of changes I want to chart, and underlying most of them is a shift toward the idea that everything is connected, that the world is a network of interrelated systems, that the isolated individual is at best a fiction, and that the natural and social realms run more on collaboration and cooperation than competition. It's a shift away from many old hierarchies and segregations and the cruelties they normalized. These ideas of interconnection emerge from many sources, from new economic models and new scientific ideas about biology and psychology, from Buddhist and Indigenous worldviews, from shifting values, from hopes and desires to undo the terrible loneliness and tendency towards isolation and the severing of connections and relationships between people, peoples, and people and nature, that seem entrenched in current social configurations. I believe we're also witnessing a shift from capitalism's tendency to see even the living, even humans, as dead things--as objects and commodities--to Indigenous and animist worldviews that regard being, sentience, and rights as qualities of rivers and mountains, as well as that of plants and animals. Of course, the tricky part of that sentence is the 'we': not everyone is on board and the backlash is ferocious." (4-6)
"The radical uncertainty of the future arises from how we're making the future in the present by how we show up, how new ideas amplify and become realities. But it's the past that shows us the possibilities, how the world has changed, how power can appear in places and among peoples assumed to be powerless and irrelevant, how the most foundational things can be transformed, how ideas and art matter in making the world. As David Graeber reminded us, 'The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.'
The world changed so gradually that many seem not to have noticed it has changed at all. Fredric Jameson is supposed to have said, 'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,' and most of the science fiction of my youth seemed to find it easier to imagine intergalactic colonialism than women's equality on earth. But others imagined many kinds of equality and fought to make them a reality." (124)
Our world has changed more than almost anyone imagined, in ways both wonderful and terrible, often in ways no one anticipated, and the sheer profundity of change in the past guarantees that this change will continue, that stability is not an option, but participating in directing change might be, if we recognize it.
...
There are many fragments to this mosaic of changes I want to chart, and underlying most of them is a shift toward the idea that everything is connected, that the world is a network of interrelated systems, that the isolated individual is at best a fiction, and that the natural and social realms run more on collaboration and cooperation than competition. It's a shift away from many old hierarchies and segregations and the cruelties they normalized. These ideas of interconnection emerge from many sources, from new economic models and new scientific ideas about biology and psychology, from Buddhist and Indigenous worldviews, from shifting values, from hopes and desires to undo the terrible loneliness and tendency towards isolation and the severing of connections and relationships between people, peoples, and people and nature, that seem entrenched in current social configurations. I believe we're also witnessing a shift from capitalism's tendency to see even the living, even humans, as dead things--as objects and commodities--to Indigenous and animist worldviews that regard being, sentience, and rights as qualities of rivers and mountains, as well as that of plants and animals. Of course, the tricky part of that sentence is the 'we': not everyone is on board and the backlash is ferocious." (4-6)
"The radical uncertainty of the future arises from how we're making the future in the present by how we show up, how new ideas amplify and become realities. But it's the past that shows us the possibilities, how the world has changed, how power can appear in places and among peoples assumed to be powerless and irrelevant, how the most foundational things can be transformed, how ideas and art matter in making the world. As David Graeber reminded us, 'The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.'
The world changed so gradually that many seem not to have noticed it has changed at all. Fredric Jameson is supposed to have said, 'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,' and most of the science fiction of my youth seemed to find it easier to imagine intergalactic colonialism than women's equality on earth. But others imagined many kinds of equality and fought to make them a reality." (124)
March 9, 2026
I find Rebecca Solnit to be one of the most thoughtful progressive writers of our era. In this book, the largest theme in the environment/natural world and not just our interaction with it, but how our societies are reflected in nature. She brings in other topics, from Buddhism to Native Americans, stitching the book with a thread of hope then fully ringing the gong of hope at the end. I appreciate her nuance in a world that often doesn’t seem to want that.
March 9, 2026
Can be read in an afternoon. I enjoyed some of the metaphors built around the presented ideas. I also liked the connectedness of the essays more than a compilation from disparate sources.
April 27, 2026
In her follow-up to Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit surveys past progressive movements and how their perceived moments of triumph were the result of slow, steady small wins that often seemed like overall losses at the time, and that the very gradual shift in culture made by these wins is what ultimately results in big legal or political changes. The Beginning Comes After the End is a compelling and necessary book that has (as always with Solnit) made me think differently about my approach to activism.
One crucial point Solnit makes is the difference between acknowledging and celebrating victories and acting triumphant. Too often, when someone tries to celebrate or name a win online, the first thing you see is a flood of comments with how much there still is to do. A good example for me was the protests against ICE. No, Bovino being stripped of command did not fix everything, but it /was/ a win, a hard-earned one that we should acknowledge. If we don't see and promote these smaller wins, we lose our perspective on 1. how victories are actually accomplished, and 2. how change is indeed continuing to happen. It helps keep hope alive, without leaning on a blind triumphant attitude that declares victory then shifts its attention away from the situation entirely.
Another really compelling point that I've been thinking a lot about is her take on the current wave of fascism and hate. Sometimes, she points out, us progressives pushing for change believe it isn't working—but the conservatives /do/. Everything we're seeing now shows that they not only see a new world approaching, but are confident that we could accomplish it. Otherwise, they wouldn't have to fight so hard to maintain a status quo that only a small percentage of people actively support. This is not a reason to turn to blind optimism, but a good way of thinking about hope and possibility.
As always, Solnit is one of my favorite commentators and writers, and never ceases to give me food for thought. I started her work in Marin County, since she's a San Francisco area author, and finally finished it a few weeks later, simmering on it in the meantime.
One crucial point Solnit makes is the difference between acknowledging and celebrating victories and acting triumphant. Too often, when someone tries to celebrate or name a win online, the first thing you see is a flood of comments with how much there still is to do. A good example for me was the protests against ICE. No, Bovino being stripped of command did not fix everything, but it /was/ a win, a hard-earned one that we should acknowledge. If we don't see and promote these smaller wins, we lose our perspective on 1. how victories are actually accomplished, and 2. how change is indeed continuing to happen. It helps keep hope alive, without leaning on a blind triumphant attitude that declares victory then shifts its attention away from the situation entirely.
Another really compelling point that I've been thinking a lot about is her take on the current wave of fascism and hate. Sometimes, she points out, us progressives pushing for change believe it isn't working—but the conservatives /do/. Everything we're seeing now shows that they not only see a new world approaching, but are confident that we could accomplish it. Otherwise, they wouldn't have to fight so hard to maintain a status quo that only a small percentage of people actively support. This is not a reason to turn to blind optimism, but a good way of thinking about hope and possibility.
As always, Solnit is one of my favorite commentators and writers, and never ceases to give me food for thought. I started her work in Marin County, since she's a San Francisco area author, and finally finished it a few weeks later, simmering on it in the meantime.
April 20, 2026
Hope! The author brings together examples of progress to argue that in many ways, we are going in the right direction, and that positive change is both possible and coming.
Is she right? Maybe not so easy to answer that. But on that question, she says this, which I liked a lot:
"There’s two ways to think about the shift toward a worldview of interconnection and interdependence I’ve been mapping in the book. One is that it’s true, and it’s certainly true in many ways scientists have document, and we can value this worldview as a more accurate and useful view of things. Another way to think about it is to recognize that whether or not it’s true, a lot of us want it to be true, and that desire says a lot about who we are right now. A vision of a better way, and a yearning for that way, imagined as the opposite of alienation, estrangement, segregation, disconnection, as the antithesis to the existential loneliness and strife of the worldview compounded of capitalism and the ideology behind privatization, social Darwinism, consumerism, individualism as separateness or selfishness. And an embrace of a better way, as science, as morality, as respect for all life. Maybe this version will fade, but I write in this era and not the next one, and I believe that this vision equips us to prepare for the next one and the leave behind the last one."
Is she right? Maybe not so easy to answer that. But on that question, she says this, which I liked a lot:
"There’s two ways to think about the shift toward a worldview of interconnection and interdependence I’ve been mapping in the book. One is that it’s true, and it’s certainly true in many ways scientists have document, and we can value this worldview as a more accurate and useful view of things. Another way to think about it is to recognize that whether or not it’s true, a lot of us want it to be true, and that desire says a lot about who we are right now. A vision of a better way, and a yearning for that way, imagined as the opposite of alienation, estrangement, segregation, disconnection, as the antithesis to the existential loneliness and strife of the worldview compounded of capitalism and the ideology behind privatization, social Darwinism, consumerism, individualism as separateness or selfishness. And an embrace of a better way, as science, as morality, as respect for all life. Maybe this version will fade, but I write in this era and not the next one, and I believe that this vision equips us to prepare for the next one and the leave behind the last one."
April 1, 2026
This was the hopeful pick-me-up I needed. Solnit never disappoints and I appreciate this book so much. She managed to name almost all of my favorite people, so that was a massive plus as well.
April 23, 2026
In a time that can feel utterly hopeless, Rebecca Solnit shows us that there always has been and is still some good in the world, it’s okay to have hope.
March 25, 2026
so good and clear and hopeful. Thank you Rebecca Solnit for your keen and hopeful insight.
April 23, 2026
4.2/5
In an era where much has felt helpless, it was incredibly grounding to read Solnit’s well-researched and hopeful account of the gradual changes over the past few decades. It was interesting to consider individuals not as nouns but verbs, in constant flow from each breath of air to our exchanges with the millions of microorganisms (where do “we” end and “they”begin??).
Favorite quote:
“Perhaps cruelty is nothing more and nothing less than the exercise of inequality as the entitlement to commit harm and the lack of empathy that allows it.”
In an era where much has felt helpless, it was incredibly grounding to read Solnit’s well-researched and hopeful account of the gradual changes over the past few decades. It was interesting to consider individuals not as nouns but verbs, in constant flow from each breath of air to our exchanges with the millions of microorganisms (where do “we” end and “they”begin??).
Favorite quote:
“Perhaps cruelty is nothing more and nothing less than the exercise of inequality as the entitlement to commit harm and the lack of empathy that allows it.”
May 11, 2026
Amazing book — this fit with the complex ways brain processes the intersection of all of the complex things that barrage my thoughts during the day hearing the news, being a parent, being an informed citizen. I’d recommend it — it’s a lot — I feel like I could re-listen and pick up just as much information. I think this read a bit like sentence starters that could be flushed into several more books. She is a gift.
April 16, 2026
This book is a mixed bag. I am a big fan of Rebecca Solnit. I have read A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland, Orwell's Roses, Paradise Built in Hell, Not Straight Road Takes You There and Hope in the Dark.
I liked the first chapter and was near the end of the second when she launched into an ill informed attack on the beloved religious naturalist, deceased since 2009, Thomas Berry. She attacked his use of we as in 'we need a new story." She accused him of not including indigenous wisdom and the wisdom of Buddhism and other world religions in his new story. Had she read more than one essay (that she referred to in the notes) or interviewed Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, his former students and teachers of his work at Yale, oh yes his biographers as well, she would have found out he was a scholar of Buddhism and Confucianism and of Native American spirituality who in many of his writings included those teachings in the New Story, praising their contributions. Then there is her attack on Paul Ehrlich, whose ideas about overpopulation she says were wrong and caused much harm were rendered obsolete by improved agriculture, referring to the Green Revolution based on petrochemical and mechanical inputs and destruction of traditional mixed farming, oh and debt financing, all for poor folks in the global south. Bafflingly she in another spot lauds an English farmer for returning his lands to mixed farming from the type of farming she says proved Ehrlich an idiot and worse. Most of the book was good, discussing improved visibility and rights and influence of Native Americans, and the accomplishments of one of my heroes, Lynn Margulis. I expected better scholarship from Solnit. She succumbs to greenwash in a few spots as well. On rights for marginalized groups she is spot on. As I said a mixed bag, not up to the standard of Hope in the Dark or Paradise Built in Hell. More research and less reliance on the greenwash and kicking scientists like Ehrlich would have been welcomed.
I liked the first chapter and was near the end of the second when she launched into an ill informed attack on the beloved religious naturalist, deceased since 2009, Thomas Berry. She attacked his use of we as in 'we need a new story." She accused him of not including indigenous wisdom and the wisdom of Buddhism and other world religions in his new story. Had she read more than one essay (that she referred to in the notes) or interviewed Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, his former students and teachers of his work at Yale, oh yes his biographers as well, she would have found out he was a scholar of Buddhism and Confucianism and of Native American spirituality who in many of his writings included those teachings in the New Story, praising their contributions. Then there is her attack on Paul Ehrlich, whose ideas about overpopulation she says were wrong and caused much harm were rendered obsolete by improved agriculture, referring to the Green Revolution based on petrochemical and mechanical inputs and destruction of traditional mixed farming, oh and debt financing, all for poor folks in the global south. Bafflingly she in another spot lauds an English farmer for returning his lands to mixed farming from the type of farming she says proved Ehrlich an idiot and worse. Most of the book was good, discussing improved visibility and rights and influence of Native Americans, and the accomplishments of one of my heroes, Lynn Margulis. I expected better scholarship from Solnit. She succumbs to greenwash in a few spots as well. On rights for marginalized groups she is spot on. As I said a mixed bag, not up to the standard of Hope in the Dark or Paradise Built in Hell. More research and less reliance on the greenwash and kicking scientists like Ehrlich would have been welcomed.
April 4, 2026
There is HOPE!!!
April 12, 2026
I enjoyed this survey of human connection moving our societies forward. Solnit does not bypass tragedies or extremes, but also highlights the unstoppable positive forward trajectory of human connection in working together for political and social change. It was a quick and easy read and I found it helpful in bleak times to reflect on the many progressive developments that resulted from people organizing over the last 60+ years -- mostly the focus is during her lifetime. I think it's especially important to imagine what could come after the terrible regime we're in at the moment I'm writing this in early 2026 US.
May 1, 2026
This fact based assessment of civil and natural rights past and present from the perspective of a Native American view is exhaustive. I found it difficult to read yet I couldn’t stop reading since much of it was history of the last 60 years that I lived through and remember first hand. I listened an audio version read by the author. It could be a text book and that is why I only recommend it to people who know they are reading a history book.
Read
May 8, 2026This brought me so much succor. I finished the book and then immediately reread it. The audiobook is narrated by Solnit, and it feels like being in conversation with a friend (a wise, well researched, compassionate and reverent friend!)
Read
March 2, 2026Review of ‘The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change’ by Rebecca Solnit
When Solnit speaks, the world should listen.
Her writing, spanning the years, has echoed with a deep personal voice, rooted in place, as well as optimistic activism. She charts and traces the changes that have transformed society and the world in the past, and reminds us that the power to change the world is within our reach and lies within us all.
This is not a ‘radical’ book- unless the power of ideologies and stories is radical in itself. Solnit has mastered the power of language long ago and the clarity and vision with which we have come to expect from her, resonates once again. Without doubt, this is a powerful vision which she lays out in ‘The Beginning Comes After the End’, one, which if adopted as a blueprint for the 21st century, would create a world and societies that would be worthy of the human race. This ‘blueprint’ would be, ‘A shift towards the idea that everything is connected, that the world is a network of inter-related systems, that the isolated individual is at best a fiction, and that the natural and social realms run more on collaboration and cooperation than competition.’
There are too many of us who are rooted in the last century- whose birth year begins with ‘19__’. We straddle both the past to which we are tethered and anchored, while the 21st century stretches out ahead of us- waiting for us to be the good ancestors for those who follow our footsteps along the path of our species. Solnit reminds us that, ‘We in the 2020s live in a world that would be unbelievable and maybe inconceivable to people sixty or seventy years earlier.’
As I read these words, I think of my father in his last 80s. Born in 1939, on the cusp of the Second World War- an event which defined the 20th century in so many ways- I think that his world and my world are incredibly different and that the changes since the mid-20th century are too numerous to mention. The changes which would have beyond his generation's ken and yet, which we take for granted on a daily basis. Yet, Solnit does not ask us to romanticise the past or to wish to recreate a ‘lost world’, with all its attendant baggage. Indeed, she warns against this. She argues that choosing to allow ourselves to listen to the lessons from the past, can bring us out from beneath the shadows of the past into a new world. ‘But it’s the past that shows us the possibilities, how the world has changed, how power can appear in places and among peoples assumed to be powerless and irrelevant, how the most foundational things can be transformed’
‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on’
We all imagine and believe that the future will be different, but perhaps don’t realise that we could be the agents of these changes. As Madonna Thunder Hawk reminds us: “We’re the ancestors of tomorrow.” Solnit herself comments that incremental changes can collectively change the course of history and the future. ‘I’ve lived through a lot of the changes they helped launch, most of them happened so incrementally that they unfolded invisibly, but a thousand steps add up to a considerable distance.’ She urges us to accept what history has shown us- more clearly than anything else- that change is possible. That the ideas cemented into the fabric of our identity and society can be broken and disturbed. ‘Our world has changed more than almost anyone imagined, in ways both wonderful and terrible, often in ways no one anticipated, and the sheer profundity of change in the past guarantees that this change will continue.’
The only constant that is guaranteed is that change happens. ‘Change is a constant, but social change has sped up in our time, altering the very fundamentals of how we think about ourselves and the natural and social worlds, and also who defines what “we” means.’ She identifies the social nudges of change, which have helped us build towards integration and interconnected relationships, rather than a distancing and ‘othering’ ‘Changes build on changes; one shift makes another possible.’
We are not at the end of history, says Solnit- we are simply the navigators in the middle of the journey- the creators of a new story. A story which will shape what the future looks like as we move through the time of this century. A simple task may be for us to try and pierce the mists of time and to imagine what the world could be like by 2100. How would that be accomplished? What, or who, would be the catalysts for this new direction? How many false starts and stumbles would happen along the way? ‘This is a reminder that you do not have to picture the destination to reach it or at least draw closer to it, you just need to choose a direction and keep on walking…’
‘A new heaven and a new earth’
Solnit quotes the words of Antonio Gramsci, when she argues that the birthing of this new changed world is a slow process. ‘The old world is dying. The new one is slow in appearing. In this light and shadow, monsters arise.’ She contends that ideas and stories have power- a power feared by those who wish to cling to the wreckage of the old world, for fear that who they are will be lost. ‘Ideas have power, and while those who support them often dismiss that power, those who fear them recognize they can change the world.’ She also notes the wisdom of Thomas Berry, when she acknowledges that the lack of a certain future path appears to some as though the path does not exist at all. Lack of certainty is not lack of existence.
“We are in trouble because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The Old Story- the account of how the world came to be and we fit into it- is not functioning properly and we have not learned the New Story.”
For Solnit, the power of stories can create new ‘forests of possibility’ and it is in this ‘possibility’ where new worlds dare to breathe. What is wonderful is that this imagery continues, as Solnit exhorts us to root ourselves in the past to reach the future.
‘What if our best hope reaches for the future by sinking its roots deep in the past? What futures can we build on these other versions of the past, these other voices with other stories to tell? What beginnings come after such an end?’
A Brave New World
As I look at the sleeping face of my 8-years-old son, I imagine the world of 2100, a time where he will almost be the same age as my father is now. It is a world which I cannot imagine, but one which I know will be different from this one.
I cannot walk with him into that brave new world, but I can hold his hand for as long as possible, to be his guide, until he carries his own dreams of change. I am reminded of the popular motivational poster that once was displayed in his room- ‘Let him sleep, for when he wakes, he will move mountains.’
I know that he will move these mountains, not by scaling the heights in a dangerous, desperate rush, but by slowly moving one stone at a time.
‘The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change’ is the most personal and uplifting book about the power of ideas and about our ability to be transformed.
We are all dreamers.
“We are living through a revolt against the future. The future will prevail.”
-Anand Giridharadas
When Solnit speaks, the world should listen.
Her writing, spanning the years, has echoed with a deep personal voice, rooted in place, as well as optimistic activism. She charts and traces the changes that have transformed society and the world in the past, and reminds us that the power to change the world is within our reach and lies within us all.
This is not a ‘radical’ book- unless the power of ideologies and stories is radical in itself. Solnit has mastered the power of language long ago and the clarity and vision with which we have come to expect from her, resonates once again. Without doubt, this is a powerful vision which she lays out in ‘The Beginning Comes After the End’, one, which if adopted as a blueprint for the 21st century, would create a world and societies that would be worthy of the human race. This ‘blueprint’ would be, ‘A shift towards the idea that everything is connected, that the world is a network of inter-related systems, that the isolated individual is at best a fiction, and that the natural and social realms run more on collaboration and cooperation than competition.’
There are too many of us who are rooted in the last century- whose birth year begins with ‘19__’. We straddle both the past to which we are tethered and anchored, while the 21st century stretches out ahead of us- waiting for us to be the good ancestors for those who follow our footsteps along the path of our species. Solnit reminds us that, ‘We in the 2020s live in a world that would be unbelievable and maybe inconceivable to people sixty or seventy years earlier.’
As I read these words, I think of my father in his last 80s. Born in 1939, on the cusp of the Second World War- an event which defined the 20th century in so many ways- I think that his world and my world are incredibly different and that the changes since the mid-20th century are too numerous to mention. The changes which would have beyond his generation's ken and yet, which we take for granted on a daily basis. Yet, Solnit does not ask us to romanticise the past or to wish to recreate a ‘lost world’, with all its attendant baggage. Indeed, she warns against this. She argues that choosing to allow ourselves to listen to the lessons from the past, can bring us out from beneath the shadows of the past into a new world. ‘But it’s the past that shows us the possibilities, how the world has changed, how power can appear in places and among peoples assumed to be powerless and irrelevant, how the most foundational things can be transformed’
‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on’
We all imagine and believe that the future will be different, but perhaps don’t realise that we could be the agents of these changes. As Madonna Thunder Hawk reminds us: “We’re the ancestors of tomorrow.” Solnit herself comments that incremental changes can collectively change the course of history and the future. ‘I’ve lived through a lot of the changes they helped launch, most of them happened so incrementally that they unfolded invisibly, but a thousand steps add up to a considerable distance.’ She urges us to accept what history has shown us- more clearly than anything else- that change is possible. That the ideas cemented into the fabric of our identity and society can be broken and disturbed. ‘Our world has changed more than almost anyone imagined, in ways both wonderful and terrible, often in ways no one anticipated, and the sheer profundity of change in the past guarantees that this change will continue.’
The only constant that is guaranteed is that change happens. ‘Change is a constant, but social change has sped up in our time, altering the very fundamentals of how we think about ourselves and the natural and social worlds, and also who defines what “we” means.’ She identifies the social nudges of change, which have helped us build towards integration and interconnected relationships, rather than a distancing and ‘othering’ ‘Changes build on changes; one shift makes another possible.’
We are not at the end of history, says Solnit- we are simply the navigators in the middle of the journey- the creators of a new story. A story which will shape what the future looks like as we move through the time of this century. A simple task may be for us to try and pierce the mists of time and to imagine what the world could be like by 2100. How would that be accomplished? What, or who, would be the catalysts for this new direction? How many false starts and stumbles would happen along the way? ‘This is a reminder that you do not have to picture the destination to reach it or at least draw closer to it, you just need to choose a direction and keep on walking…’
‘A new heaven and a new earth’
Solnit quotes the words of Antonio Gramsci, when she argues that the birthing of this new changed world is a slow process. ‘The old world is dying. The new one is slow in appearing. In this light and shadow, monsters arise.’ She contends that ideas and stories have power- a power feared by those who wish to cling to the wreckage of the old world, for fear that who they are will be lost. ‘Ideas have power, and while those who support them often dismiss that power, those who fear them recognize they can change the world.’ She also notes the wisdom of Thomas Berry, when she acknowledges that the lack of a certain future path appears to some as though the path does not exist at all. Lack of certainty is not lack of existence.
“We are in trouble because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The Old Story- the account of how the world came to be and we fit into it- is not functioning properly and we have not learned the New Story.”
For Solnit, the power of stories can create new ‘forests of possibility’ and it is in this ‘possibility’ where new worlds dare to breathe. What is wonderful is that this imagery continues, as Solnit exhorts us to root ourselves in the past to reach the future.
‘What if our best hope reaches for the future by sinking its roots deep in the past? What futures can we build on these other versions of the past, these other voices with other stories to tell? What beginnings come after such an end?’
A Brave New World
As I look at the sleeping face of my 8-years-old son, I imagine the world of 2100, a time where he will almost be the same age as my father is now. It is a world which I cannot imagine, but one which I know will be different from this one.
I cannot walk with him into that brave new world, but I can hold his hand for as long as possible, to be his guide, until he carries his own dreams of change. I am reminded of the popular motivational poster that once was displayed in his room- ‘Let him sleep, for when he wakes, he will move mountains.’
I know that he will move these mountains, not by scaling the heights in a dangerous, desperate rush, but by slowly moving one stone at a time.
‘The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change’ is the most personal and uplifting book about the power of ideas and about our ability to be transformed.
We are all dreamers.
“We are living through a revolt against the future. The future will prevail.”
-Anand Giridharadas
March 5, 2026
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: Rebecca Solnit offers a thrilling survey of the sheer breadth and scale of social, political, scientific, and cultural change over the past three quarters of a century.
In this sequel to her enduring bestseller Hope in the Dark, Solnit surveys a world that has changed dramatically since the year 1960. She argues that, despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history, change is not a possibility, it is an inevitability, and the nature of that change is determined by who participates and how.
The changes amount to nothing less than dismantling an old civilization and building a new one, whose newness is often the return of the old ways and wisdoms. In this rising worldview, interconnection is a core idea and value. But because the transformation has happened in so many disparate arenas, and within a longer arc of history, the scale of that change is seldom recognized.
While the backlash of white nationalist authoritarianism, Manosphere misogyny, and justifications for callousness, selfishness, economic inequality, and environmental destruction collectively drive individualism and isolation, the elements of this new world are related in their vision of more inclusion, equality, interconnection. This new vision embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, and indigenous and non-Western ideas, particularly Buddhism, as well as breakthroughs in the life sciences and neuroscience, pointing toward a more interconnected, relational world.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Collections often draw from existing bodies of work. Author Solnit began drawing acclaim for her robust, tendentious writing in the early Aughts, and has never fallen out of the cultural conversation. She won't stop telling the truth, though, so her honesty wins her detractors and even enemies across the political spectrum.
One knows a thinker is doing it right when everybody is mad at them for something.
This essay collection breaks no new ground in her public thinking. It is, if I'm honest, a highlight reel with a bit more sameness than I wanted to read. It is also a collection drawn from decades of work. I found myself thinking, "I remember this, move on," and finding it necessary to recall in the moment that it's collected not commissioned to be written anew or afresh. Not every essay chosen was necessarily up to the highest standards in the book. Again, it's a function of a collection...it's not possible to be perfect, but it's possible, like Author Solnit, to be trenchant and to add value to the consideration of organizing theme of this particular project.
Progress is relative. In any consideration of the societal norms prevailing now that has even a modest degree of perspective, things are hugely better for women, queers, trans folk, and people of color. We're always being bombarded with messaging to the contrary, for reasons y'all need to read Paul Linebarger's book to really connect with. A collection of work like this one is a good corrective to the easy-to-internalize message of the world sucks always has always will. It's true; it's also wrong; both these things can and do coexist because, faithless to your entire life's training, almost nothing in the observable universe is a binary. All physical systems are spectrums and there's mounting evidence literally everything is in fact spectrum...look into quantum physics and certainty vanishes to be replaced by probabilities (aka spectra). Author Solnit stressing that each ending is also a beginning is very much in line with this mode of thinking.
It's new enough to most of her audience that repetition is probably a good idea to deploy in examining the topic. Like any new-to-you theory, perspective, or fact, it's going to need some hammering home to become part of one's mental structural supports. I'm ahead of this curve so it wore on my nerve a bit more than it will for others. I hope you'll pick it up and give it a try if you're sinking under the wight of the world's idiocies and evils.
We need the perspective of one who has been decades in the trenches, struggling against the dying order's loud and lousy distractions, to remind us we've come far. We need to keep moving ahead. It's easier to find the will to do that if we've got a stedy hand and an encouraging voice like Author solnit's telling us to remember it can be done.
Because it has been done. It's not finished, this work; it never really is. Now, get back to it!
The Publisher Says: Rebecca Solnit offers a thrilling survey of the sheer breadth and scale of social, political, scientific, and cultural change over the past three quarters of a century.
In this sequel to her enduring bestseller Hope in the Dark, Solnit surveys a world that has changed dramatically since the year 1960. She argues that, despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history, change is not a possibility, it is an inevitability, and the nature of that change is determined by who participates and how.
The changes amount to nothing less than dismantling an old civilization and building a new one, whose newness is often the return of the old ways and wisdoms. In this rising worldview, interconnection is a core idea and value. But because the transformation has happened in so many disparate arenas, and within a longer arc of history, the scale of that change is seldom recognized.
While the backlash of white nationalist authoritarianism, Manosphere misogyny, and justifications for callousness, selfishness, economic inequality, and environmental destruction collectively drive individualism and isolation, the elements of this new world are related in their vision of more inclusion, equality, interconnection. This new vision embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, and indigenous and non-Western ideas, particularly Buddhism, as well as breakthroughs in the life sciences and neuroscience, pointing toward a more interconnected, relational world.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Collections often draw from existing bodies of work. Author Solnit began drawing acclaim for her robust, tendentious writing in the early Aughts, and has never fallen out of the cultural conversation. She won't stop telling the truth, though, so her honesty wins her detractors and even enemies across the political spectrum.
One knows a thinker is doing it right when everybody is mad at them for something.
This essay collection breaks no new ground in her public thinking. It is, if I'm honest, a highlight reel with a bit more sameness than I wanted to read. It is also a collection drawn from decades of work. I found myself thinking, "I remember this, move on," and finding it necessary to recall in the moment that it's collected not commissioned to be written anew or afresh. Not every essay chosen was necessarily up to the highest standards in the book. Again, it's a function of a collection...it's not possible to be perfect, but it's possible, like Author Solnit, to be trenchant and to add value to the consideration of organizing theme of this particular project.
Progress is relative. In any consideration of the societal norms prevailing now that has even a modest degree of perspective, things are hugely better for women, queers, trans folk, and people of color. We're always being bombarded with messaging to the contrary, for reasons y'all need to read Paul Linebarger's book to really connect with. A collection of work like this one is a good corrective to the easy-to-internalize message of the world sucks always has always will. It's true; it's also wrong; both these things can and do coexist because, faithless to your entire life's training, almost nothing in the observable universe is a binary. All physical systems are spectrums and there's mounting evidence literally everything is in fact spectrum...look into quantum physics and certainty vanishes to be replaced by probabilities (aka spectra). Author Solnit stressing that each ending is also a beginning is very much in line with this mode of thinking.
It's new enough to most of her audience that repetition is probably a good idea to deploy in examining the topic. Like any new-to-you theory, perspective, or fact, it's going to need some hammering home to become part of one's mental structural supports. I'm ahead of this curve so it wore on my nerve a bit more than it will for others. I hope you'll pick it up and give it a try if you're sinking under the wight of the world's idiocies and evils.
We need the perspective of one who has been decades in the trenches, struggling against the dying order's loud and lousy distractions, to remind us we've come far. We need to keep moving ahead. It's easier to find the will to do that if we've got a stedy hand and an encouraging voice like Author solnit's telling us to remember it can be done.
Because it has been done. It's not finished, this work; it never really is. Now, get back to it!
Read
May 3, 2026Rebecca Solnit's political writing in this volume isn't as absorbing to me as her previous work. This is wholy subjective, but I don't find it to be as robust. It lacks the satisfying specificity I'm often looking for in an essay. It feels appropriate for her to include the word "Notes" in the subtitle, which captures some of the tone of the book: more casual, less intent on convincing those who aren't already leaning in the same direction.
Notes
We often speak as though we are here to toil, endlessly planting and cultivating seeds and seedlings, but we have also feasted on harvests from what was sown and tended by those who came before. (PG. 17)
This is a reminder that you do not have to picture the destination to reach it or at least draw closer to it, you just need to choose a direction and keep on walking—though that metaphor makes it sound as though it already exists, if at a distance, rather than that the process itself creates it and covers the distance between the idea and the actuality. (PG. 19)
“The old world is dying. The new one is slow in appearing. In this light and shadow, monsters arise.” Gramsci (PG 20)
Rather than build a better world for all, they unleash desperation and chaos out of confidence in their ability to stand apart—in gated communities, luxury towers, armored cars, private islands, with the help of private police—from the common fate. (PG 23)
In 1978, Thomas Berry wrote, in words echoing Gramsci’s, “We are in trouble because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The Old Story—the account of how the world came to be and we fit into it —is not functioning properly and we have not learned the New Story.” (PG 23)
A system is by definition in motion, connecting and circulating, made up of the flow of interactions and exchanges; it is a process of change. Antisystemic thinking denies that anything is connected to anything else, or should be; insists that there are no ties, and if there are, they shouldn’t bind us; that individuals are free, with a freedom that means that we are not entrenched in and shaped by systems— ultimately, that the systems themselves do not exist. If there is no such thing as society, then racism and other forms of systemic discrimination do not exist, and, as conservatives regularly assert, circumstances such as poverty are the result of personal failure rather than collective structures. (PG. 76)
The willingness to do harm comes from a sense of disconnection, both in the emotional and moral sense of indifference and in claims that there are no consequences because nothing is connected to anything else. The antisystemic view of the world often manifests as attacks on real systems— for example, climate denial is at its heart a denial of consequences, of causes and effects. This denial legitimizes continued destruction and opposition to climate regulations and treaties, not least because these are systems and institutions that are at odds with the unlimited individual freedom to harm, legitimized by denying the reality of that harm. At some level, the fact of climate change is offensive to isolationists, since the climate is the great overarching system within which all life on earth exists, and climate science and climate activism both announce that everything we do has consequences because everything is connected. (PG. 77)
People with more money than they could ever lavish on themselves claim that we cannot possibly afford to feed the starving or care for the earth. It’s a spiritual and emotional poverty projected as material poverty, a justification for denying others the necessities even when that means creating tremendous social strife, which the ultra-rich can then buy their way out of, the ideology of isolation as actual luxury goods and geographies. (PG. 80)
That example is given in a remarkable 2012 paper, written by two biologists and a philosopher of science, titled “A Symbiotic View of Life: We Have Never Been Individuals.” The authors write, “The discovery of symbiosis throughout the animal kingdom is fundamentally transforming the classical conception of an insular individuality into one in which interactive relationships among species blurs the boundaries of the organism and obscures the notion of essential identity.” (PG. 93)
A new subfield called processual biology looks at the world as made up of processes rather than objects, as phenomena forever flowing and changing and thereby exchanging with each other and changing into each other. It proposes that it is more useful and accurate to think of ourselves and most of what we call things as events. (PG. 131)
David Graeber reminded us, “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.” (PG. 134)
Notes
We often speak as though we are here to toil, endlessly planting and cultivating seeds and seedlings, but we have also feasted on harvests from what was sown and tended by those who came before. (PG. 17)
This is a reminder that you do not have to picture the destination to reach it or at least draw closer to it, you just need to choose a direction and keep on walking—though that metaphor makes it sound as though it already exists, if at a distance, rather than that the process itself creates it and covers the distance between the idea and the actuality. (PG. 19)
“The old world is dying. The new one is slow in appearing. In this light and shadow, monsters arise.” Gramsci (PG 20)
Rather than build a better world for all, they unleash desperation and chaos out of confidence in their ability to stand apart—in gated communities, luxury towers, armored cars, private islands, with the help of private police—from the common fate. (PG 23)
In 1978, Thomas Berry wrote, in words echoing Gramsci’s, “We are in trouble because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The Old Story—the account of how the world came to be and we fit into it —is not functioning properly and we have not learned the New Story.” (PG 23)
A system is by definition in motion, connecting and circulating, made up of the flow of interactions and exchanges; it is a process of change. Antisystemic thinking denies that anything is connected to anything else, or should be; insists that there are no ties, and if there are, they shouldn’t bind us; that individuals are free, with a freedom that means that we are not entrenched in and shaped by systems— ultimately, that the systems themselves do not exist. If there is no such thing as society, then racism and other forms of systemic discrimination do not exist, and, as conservatives regularly assert, circumstances such as poverty are the result of personal failure rather than collective structures. (PG. 76)
The willingness to do harm comes from a sense of disconnection, both in the emotional and moral sense of indifference and in claims that there are no consequences because nothing is connected to anything else. The antisystemic view of the world often manifests as attacks on real systems— for example, climate denial is at its heart a denial of consequences, of causes and effects. This denial legitimizes continued destruction and opposition to climate regulations and treaties, not least because these are systems and institutions that are at odds with the unlimited individual freedom to harm, legitimized by denying the reality of that harm. At some level, the fact of climate change is offensive to isolationists, since the climate is the great overarching system within which all life on earth exists, and climate science and climate activism both announce that everything we do has consequences because everything is connected. (PG. 77)
People with more money than they could ever lavish on themselves claim that we cannot possibly afford to feed the starving or care for the earth. It’s a spiritual and emotional poverty projected as material poverty, a justification for denying others the necessities even when that means creating tremendous social strife, which the ultra-rich can then buy their way out of, the ideology of isolation as actual luxury goods and geographies. (PG. 80)
That example is given in a remarkable 2012 paper, written by two biologists and a philosopher of science, titled “A Symbiotic View of Life: We Have Never Been Individuals.” The authors write, “The discovery of symbiosis throughout the animal kingdom is fundamentally transforming the classical conception of an insular individuality into one in which interactive relationships among species blurs the boundaries of the organism and obscures the notion of essential identity.” (PG. 93)
A new subfield called processual biology looks at the world as made up of processes rather than objects, as phenomena forever flowing and changing and thereby exchanging with each other and changing into each other. It proposes that it is more useful and accurate to think of ourselves and most of what we call things as events. (PG. 131)
David Graeber reminded us, “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.” (PG. 134)
April 1, 2026
“Hope” is a great four letter word.
The Beginning Comes After the End by Rebecca Solnit packs a lot into a small volume. This collection of dispatches reads more like someone trying (calmly, patiently) to answer a question a lot of us are circling right now: how do you keep going when you can’t tell if anything you’re doing is working?
That’s the feeling, yes? That things are…a lot? Maybe too much? That the future feels like it’s unfolding out of control. Solnit doesn’t pretend otherwise as she moves through all of it: the pandemic, climate change, political upheaval, the ongoing fights around feminism, racial justice, Indigenous rights, and who gets to belong and be heard. Nor does she pretend it’s easily manageable. She just keeps pointing us outward and backward – look at where we’ve been, look at where we are, look at what actual people have done, over time, to move things, even when it didn’t look like anything was moving! Look! And breathe!
I am grateful Solnit refuses both despair and an obnoxiously cheerful “everything will be fine, just stay positive” mindset. She posits that things are broken, often badly so, but also things are unfinished. That unfinished part is the little nook where hope hangs out. The title is also a clue on how to experience these shaky moments where we feel powerless. Endings are thresholds.
Solnit explores the idea that change often doesn’t look like we think it does or should. It’s slow, uneven, often invisible while it’s happening. For better or worse, the people doing the work often don’t get to see the results. Later – sometimes much later – something shifts and opens.
The work mattered. And it continues to matter. Uncertainty is just part of it. The only people who get certainty are the ones already holding power. The rest of us get to operate without a guarantee, which for as uncomfortable as it is, is the only way anything actually changes.
Tied the question of who gets to be heard and whose stories are ignored/erased, is the bigger idea that we’re separate from each other and from the natural world. That story, she suggests, is part of the problem. Once you believe you’re separate, it’s a lot easier to disengage. Instead, she argues connection.
Solnit is quite clear that improvements do not and will not unfold neatly, partly because we’re swimming in a flood of information — fragmented, decontextualized, sometimes just…information-ish — and it messes with our ability to tell what’s actually changing. Are we moving forward? Are we stuck? Does anything ever really happen?
Her answer is that it’s hard to tell from inside it. Without context, everything flattens, and you lose sight of the big picture because you’re inside the frame. But things have shifted, and we’ve come further than we think.
We have a long way to go, she says. And also, we’re not where we started.
Have I mentioned that “hope” is a great four letter word?
The Beginning Comes After the End by Rebecca Solnit packs a lot into a small volume. This collection of dispatches reads more like someone trying (calmly, patiently) to answer a question a lot of us are circling right now: how do you keep going when you can’t tell if anything you’re doing is working?
That’s the feeling, yes? That things are…a lot? Maybe too much? That the future feels like it’s unfolding out of control. Solnit doesn’t pretend otherwise as she moves through all of it: the pandemic, climate change, political upheaval, the ongoing fights around feminism, racial justice, Indigenous rights, and who gets to belong and be heard. Nor does she pretend it’s easily manageable. She just keeps pointing us outward and backward – look at where we’ve been, look at where we are, look at what actual people have done, over time, to move things, even when it didn’t look like anything was moving! Look! And breathe!
I am grateful Solnit refuses both despair and an obnoxiously cheerful “everything will be fine, just stay positive” mindset. She posits that things are broken, often badly so, but also things are unfinished. That unfinished part is the little nook where hope hangs out. The title is also a clue on how to experience these shaky moments where we feel powerless. Endings are thresholds.
Solnit explores the idea that change often doesn’t look like we think it does or should. It’s slow, uneven, often invisible while it’s happening. For better or worse, the people doing the work often don’t get to see the results. Later – sometimes much later – something shifts and opens.
The work mattered. And it continues to matter. Uncertainty is just part of it. The only people who get certainty are the ones already holding power. The rest of us get to operate without a guarantee, which for as uncomfortable as it is, is the only way anything actually changes.
Tied the question of who gets to be heard and whose stories are ignored/erased, is the bigger idea that we’re separate from each other and from the natural world. That story, she suggests, is part of the problem. Once you believe you’re separate, it’s a lot easier to disengage. Instead, she argues connection.
Solnit is quite clear that improvements do not and will not unfold neatly, partly because we’re swimming in a flood of information — fragmented, decontextualized, sometimes just…information-ish — and it messes with our ability to tell what’s actually changing. Are we moving forward? Are we stuck? Does anything ever really happen?
Her answer is that it’s hard to tell from inside it. Without context, everything flattens, and you lose sight of the big picture because you’re inside the frame. But things have shifted, and we’ve come further than we think.
We have a long way to go, she says. And also, we’re not where we started.
Have I mentioned that “hope” is a great four letter word?
May 4, 2026
It's easy to see the troubles we're in with the present Fascistic regime, and to ignore the context. Solnit's book helps set the context, the sweeping changes that have happened, and the fact that this pushback is happening because of the amount of change.
The book is hopeful in recounting the positive changes in rights, social acceptance, and warfare that have taken place.
The book is realistic when recording the pushback, the violence, and the hypocrisy taking place in the present.
Because the book combines both aspects of reality – the past and present –it is a good antidote to despair. Much abides and much needs to be done. I'll quote several passages that neither ignore present realities or wallow in depression.
"I call it pushback, but so much of this could be called rewind or an attempt at it, to drag the present back to the past."
"This is the chaos of the end of something. And on matters of race and identity, the Trump era doesn’t have the crackle of a launch. It has been a mourning. A mourning for white power. A mourning for a time when simply to be white and show up was enough. A mourning for an era in which simply to be a man, and not necessarily an especially capable one, could get you ahead of other people. We must understand that what we’ve been living through is backlash. Backlash. It’s not the engine of history. It is the revolt against the engine of history.”
Solnit quote Giridharadas '“We are living through a revolt against the future. The future will prevail.” A new world is struggling, but it is also being born, or perhaps it has been born and is struggling with its first breaths, its first steps. Arundhati Roy had put it another way in her address to the World Social Forum in 2003: “Another world is not only possible, she’s on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.” Of course, worlds are always being born, always being swept away; change is the only constant. But the transformation of everyday life has in recent decades been revolutionary in its scope, its reach into every arena of life, from how we produce energy to how we think about food and nature and human rights."'
Near the beginning of the book, Solnit quotes the famous Italian author Antonio Gramsci; it's a quote I recognized through its use, but not it's context: “The old world is dying. The new one is slow in appearing. In this light and shadow, monsters arise.”
We are dealing with those monsters, but there is a foundation of change and hope. A good book for those concerned with both.
The book is hopeful in recounting the positive changes in rights, social acceptance, and warfare that have taken place.
The book is realistic when recording the pushback, the violence, and the hypocrisy taking place in the present.
Because the book combines both aspects of reality – the past and present –it is a good antidote to despair. Much abides and much needs to be done. I'll quote several passages that neither ignore present realities or wallow in depression.
"I call it pushback, but so much of this could be called rewind or an attempt at it, to drag the present back to the past."
"This is the chaos of the end of something. And on matters of race and identity, the Trump era doesn’t have the crackle of a launch. It has been a mourning. A mourning for white power. A mourning for a time when simply to be white and show up was enough. A mourning for an era in which simply to be a man, and not necessarily an especially capable one, could get you ahead of other people. We must understand that what we’ve been living through is backlash. Backlash. It’s not the engine of history. It is the revolt against the engine of history.”
Solnit quote Giridharadas '“We are living through a revolt against the future. The future will prevail.” A new world is struggling, but it is also being born, or perhaps it has been born and is struggling with its first breaths, its first steps. Arundhati Roy had put it another way in her address to the World Social Forum in 2003: “Another world is not only possible, she’s on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.” Of course, worlds are always being born, always being swept away; change is the only constant. But the transformation of everyday life has in recent decades been revolutionary in its scope, its reach into every arena of life, from how we produce energy to how we think about food and nature and human rights."'
Near the beginning of the book, Solnit quotes the famous Italian author Antonio Gramsci; it's a quote I recognized through its use, but not it's context: “The old world is dying. The new one is slow in appearing. In this light and shadow, monsters arise.”
We are dealing with those monsters, but there is a foundation of change and hope. A good book for those concerned with both.
April 11, 2026
The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change, by Rebecca Solnit, is a must read for anyone seeking a hopeful path through the dystopian vision of reality served up daily, on tidal waves of information we are urged to surf, using alternately titillating and terrifying headlines to grab attention when smart phones click on to fill unscheduled time. Solnit cuts through that mind numbing, anxiety laden cacophony to open a portal into the hidden evidence of the birthing process well underway beneath it, of a global, life-affirming and regenerative worldview. That birthing process has been intentionally relegated to the shadows of conventional cultural discourse for the past half century, by the powerful beneficiaries of social structures built from and sustained by the dominant Western worldview that exploded into global culture with the industrial revolution.
Solnit's inspiring story delineates key parts of the tapestry of change that has steadily raised a life-supporting worldview up from the grassroots over the last fifty years. That tapestry now covers the globe, despite the fear mongering and cruel destruction dramatically playing out on cultural surfaces; a tapestry woven in a multitude of complementary colors of active hope, as the late Joanna Macy called the courageous collaboration of its weavers. As an author whose life experience has been gained by working to make those threads more vibrantly visible over the course of my adulthood, The Beginning Comes After the End has already become a treasured resource of hope, joy and courage in this precarious time for Earth life.
The process of walking the path from where we find ourselves into a dreamed-of future creates the adjacent possible, as Rob Hopkins describes it, with each step. Taking those steps one at a time, shoulder to shoulder with millions of others leaning into the headwinds of this backlash moment, is how the young, transformative worldview may soon gain enough traction to swiftly replace the mechanistic destruction created by the unspoken premises behind conventional Western culture. The power of caring community, and the heart healing it has the capacity to generate and spread, is clearly and lyrically articulated in this marvelous book.
Solnit's inspiring story delineates key parts of the tapestry of change that has steadily raised a life-supporting worldview up from the grassroots over the last fifty years. That tapestry now covers the globe, despite the fear mongering and cruel destruction dramatically playing out on cultural surfaces; a tapestry woven in a multitude of complementary colors of active hope, as the late Joanna Macy called the courageous collaboration of its weavers. As an author whose life experience has been gained by working to make those threads more vibrantly visible over the course of my adulthood, The Beginning Comes After the End has already become a treasured resource of hope, joy and courage in this precarious time for Earth life.
The process of walking the path from where we find ourselves into a dreamed-of future creates the adjacent possible, as Rob Hopkins describes it, with each step. Taking those steps one at a time, shoulder to shoulder with millions of others leaning into the headwinds of this backlash moment, is how the young, transformative worldview may soon gain enough traction to swiftly replace the mechanistic destruction created by the unspoken premises behind conventional Western culture. The power of caring community, and the heart healing it has the capacity to generate and spread, is clearly and lyrically articulated in this marvelous book.
April 12, 2026
This audiobook is a balm to the soul. First and foremost, this book is a well-reasoned, well-supported argument for maintaining some hope for America and humankind in the midst of the dismal and disheartening present moment. Solnit makes the compelling case that we, as a society, have actually made an immense amount of forward progress in arenas like gay rights and justice for Native Americans, and that while the current regime seeks to roll back a lot of that progress, this is the backlash that often happens (if not, always happens) when society changes and old norms shift. And while the backlash has very real, often very violent consequences, it rarely “wins” the age. I’m going to paraphrase Solnit poorly here, but at one point, she says something like, “It is not that hard to kill people, but it is very difficult to kill ideas about how people should live, and so many great ideas about civil rights and social justice have taken root and are still spreading.”
So, this book makes a wonderfully logical case for taking heart, while fully acknowledging the serious evils of our current reality. Solnit deftly weaves together a wide range of examples and evidence from very different disciplines and people. She is able to synthesize some big ideas into some lovely, lively, and succinct writing that is both thought-provoking and easy to follow.
Beyond the high quality of her writing, the audiobook was a delight. Solnit narrates her own book (which is only 5 hours long) and her voice is soothing. She oozes wisdom and gentle authority. Honestly, it felt like Mother Willow was whispering this book in my ear, and it felt grounding to hear a rational case for having hope when it feels like everything this burning.
This book was so solid and made me wonder why Solnit isn’t more highly regarded or widely known as one of the great thinkers of our time.
(Probs because she’s a woman, let’s be real)
Anywho, I highly recommend!
So, this book makes a wonderfully logical case for taking heart, while fully acknowledging the serious evils of our current reality. Solnit deftly weaves together a wide range of examples and evidence from very different disciplines and people. She is able to synthesize some big ideas into some lovely, lively, and succinct writing that is both thought-provoking and easy to follow.
Beyond the high quality of her writing, the audiobook was a delight. Solnit narrates her own book (which is only 5 hours long) and her voice is soothing. She oozes wisdom and gentle authority. Honestly, it felt like Mother Willow was whispering this book in my ear, and it felt grounding to hear a rational case for having hope when it feels like everything this burning.
This book was so solid and made me wonder why Solnit isn’t more highly regarded or widely known as one of the great thinkers of our time.
(Probs because she’s a woman, let’s be real)
Anywho, I highly recommend!
April 20, 2026
I have to admit that I like the convenience of plastic, especially the bags. They don't leak, and if you've got a mess to contain, they're magical. Of course, plastic itself is now a mess, and has been for a long time.
Similarly, in my early education, I was taught to celebrate the European age of exploration and discovery. And the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization also made things convenient and pleasant for a number of people. I like air conditioning.
But the age of exploration brought about colonialism, which was a shock and a misery for the colonized. The colonists thought they knew just what to do with other people's continents, and that they had a perfect right to do it. And industrialization extracted an astonishing amount of materials from the earth in just a few hundred years, and the waste products from consuming those materials include massive amounts of greenhouse gases which are making most people's lives a lot less convenient.
I agree with Rebecca Solnit that we are at the end of that age, and at the beginning of a time when more people have come to see the wisdom of Indigenous people's view of life as a system in which all things (and people) are interconnected, and their ability to live sustainably. Change can happen so slowly that it's hard to recognize, but there are ideas we hold now that were unthinkable just a few decades ago.
My favorite books are ones which, when I'm reading them, send my mind in all sorts of directions related to the ideas in the books. And in this particular book, the author has a way of anticipating where my mind will travel. Rebecca Solnit is a keen observer who seems to be up on everything. She sees today's energy-swilling tech bros, and she's got their number. Their dream of leaving a used-up earth behind and colonizing space is impossible and a bad idea. (For further reading on that subject, see Adam Becker's More Everything Forever, which I'll never stop touting.)
Similarly, in my early education, I was taught to celebrate the European age of exploration and discovery. And the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization also made things convenient and pleasant for a number of people. I like air conditioning.
But the age of exploration brought about colonialism, which was a shock and a misery for the colonized. The colonists thought they knew just what to do with other people's continents, and that they had a perfect right to do it. And industrialization extracted an astonishing amount of materials from the earth in just a few hundred years, and the waste products from consuming those materials include massive amounts of greenhouse gases which are making most people's lives a lot less convenient.
I agree with Rebecca Solnit that we are at the end of that age, and at the beginning of a time when more people have come to see the wisdom of Indigenous people's view of life as a system in which all things (and people) are interconnected, and their ability to live sustainably. Change can happen so slowly that it's hard to recognize, but there are ideas we hold now that were unthinkable just a few decades ago.
My favorite books are ones which, when I'm reading them, send my mind in all sorts of directions related to the ideas in the books. And in this particular book, the author has a way of anticipating where my mind will travel. Rebecca Solnit is a keen observer who seems to be up on everything. She sees today's energy-swilling tech bros, and she's got their number. Their dream of leaving a used-up earth behind and colonizing space is impossible and a bad idea. (For further reading on that subject, see Adam Becker's More Everything Forever, which I'll never stop touting.)
December 19, 2025
The Beginning Comes After the End is one of those books that quietly but firmly reshapes how you think. Rebecca Solnit builds her argument essay by essay, dismantling the idea that political or social change should be fast, visible, or linear. She repeatedly returns to the point that despair often comes from expecting history to behave neatly, when in reality meaningful change unfolds slowly, unevenly, and often out of sight. By drawing on examples from feminist movements, climate activism, Indigenous resistance, and past political struggles, Solnit shows how victories are frequently recognized only years later, long after the work has been done.
One of the most powerful throughlines is her insistence that uncertainty is not a failure state but the very condition that makes hope possible. Solnit challenges the reader to sit with not knowing outcomes and still act, arguing that certainty belongs to the status quo, not to justice. Her discussions of silenced voices, especially women’s voices, tie personal experience to systemic patterns of erasure and power, reinforcing the idea that telling the truth is itself a form of resistance. The essays do not offer comfort in the form of easy solutions, but they offer something more durable: a framework for staying engaged without guarantees. By the end, the book feels less like a collection of essays and more like a recalibration of how to understand endings, failure, and the long work of change.
Thank you NetGalley for the eARC.
One of the most powerful throughlines is her insistence that uncertainty is not a failure state but the very condition that makes hope possible. Solnit challenges the reader to sit with not knowing outcomes and still act, arguing that certainty belongs to the status quo, not to justice. Her discussions of silenced voices, especially women’s voices, tie personal experience to systemic patterns of erasure and power, reinforcing the idea that telling the truth is itself a form of resistance. The essays do not offer comfort in the form of easy solutions, but they offer something more durable: a framework for staying engaged without guarantees. By the end, the book feels less like a collection of essays and more like a recalibration of how to understand endings, failure, and the long work of change.
Thank you NetGalley for the eARC.
April 30, 2026
I highlighted so many wonderful pieces of wisdom, but here are a few. Hopefully, they encourage you to pick up the book.
"Fascism claims the past, or a fantasy version of it, as paradise while it tries to strangle the future and insists that order only comes through repression and the reinstatement of inequalities."
"So many things feed forgetting and undermine memory, including news that reports the events of the moment without the context that gives them coherence by showing the patterns into which they fit... The very term news evokes the new, while the understanding of what just happened requires knowing sources, context, evolutions of an idea or a piece of legislation or a career or a campaign."
"I've often thought our enemies believe in use even when we don't believe in ourselves, and this confirmation that they believe we've changed the world in consequential ways..."
"People with more money than they could ever lavish on themselves claim that we cannot possibly afford to feed the starving or care for the earth. It's a spiritual and emotional poverty projected as material poverty, a justification for denying other the necessities even when that means creating tremendous social strife, which the ultra-rich can then buy their way out of..."
"Rather than build a better world for all, they unleash desperation and chaos out of confidence in their ability to stand apart - in gated in communities, luxury towers, armored cars, private islands, which the help of private police - from the common fate."
"Fascism claims the past, or a fantasy version of it, as paradise while it tries to strangle the future and insists that order only comes through repression and the reinstatement of inequalities."
"So many things feed forgetting and undermine memory, including news that reports the events of the moment without the context that gives them coherence by showing the patterns into which they fit... The very term news evokes the new, while the understanding of what just happened requires knowing sources, context, evolutions of an idea or a piece of legislation or a career or a campaign."
"I've often thought our enemies believe in use even when we don't believe in ourselves, and this confirmation that they believe we've changed the world in consequential ways..."
"People with more money than they could ever lavish on themselves claim that we cannot possibly afford to feed the starving or care for the earth. It's a spiritual and emotional poverty projected as material poverty, a justification for denying other the necessities even when that means creating tremendous social strife, which the ultra-rich can then buy their way out of..."
"Rather than build a better world for all, they unleash desperation and chaos out of confidence in their ability to stand apart - in gated in communities, luxury towers, armored cars, private islands, which the help of private police - from the common fate."
April 17, 2026
Rebecca Solnit offers a short but deeply hopeful meditation on our present moment. Rather than dwelling in doom and gloom, she encourages readers to look at the significant progress made over the past sixty years, and to recognize that this progress continues, even amid the threats of our current systems. She likens our moment to a caterpillar in its chrysalis, dissolved into seeming chaos, yet in the midst of transformation. What feels like an ending is in fact the beginning of something new.
Solnit traces the impact of major social movements (civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ activism, environmentalism), arguing that while progress is neither smooth nor linear, it is real and ongoing. At the heart of her work is a powerful reminder of interconnectedness. Just as ecosystems thrive on biodiversity, so too human societies depend on diversity and inclusion. A forest of a single species is fragile, a thriving one is richly varied. Likewise, human life is strengthened through interdependence.
At a time when so much media emphasizes collapse and crisis, this brief volume offers a welcome counterpoint. It reminds us not only that change is possible, but that it is already happening.
Thank you Haymarket Books for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Solnit traces the impact of major social movements (civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ activism, environmentalism), arguing that while progress is neither smooth nor linear, it is real and ongoing. At the heart of her work is a powerful reminder of interconnectedness. Just as ecosystems thrive on biodiversity, so too human societies depend on diversity and inclusion. A forest of a single species is fragile, a thriving one is richly varied. Likewise, human life is strengthened through interdependence.
At a time when so much media emphasizes collapse and crisis, this brief volume offers a welcome counterpoint. It reminds us not only that change is possible, but that it is already happening.
Thank you Haymarket Books for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
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