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The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change
Rebecca Solnit offers a thrilling account 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. Despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history, change is not a possibility; it is an inevitability.
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 is obscured within a longer arc of history, its scale is seldom recognized.
While the white nationalist and authoritarian backlash drives individualism and isolation, this new world embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, scientific breakthroughs, and Indigenous and non-Western ideas, 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. Despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history, change is not a possibility; it is an inevitability.
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 is obscured within a longer arc of history, its scale is seldom recognized.
While the white nationalist and authoritarian backlash drives individualism and isolation, this new world embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, scientific breakthroughs, and Indigenous and non-Western ideas, pointing toward a more interconnected, relational world.
169 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 3, 2026
About the author
Rebecca Solnit
119 books8,316 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 204 reviews
June 10, 2026
glad I read this one - Solnit's essays are always good, but this was quite hopeful right now.
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.”
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.
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.
June 16, 2026
My sense of this book: It’s designed to inspire hope in people trying to enact progressive change, leaning especially on historical examples to show that seemingly unyielding conditions can be endured, patiently transformed, and eventually overcome. That’s a broader way of stating the case than Solnit uses, to be fair—she employs a number of analogous and overlapping examples to demonstrate her specific social and political points, but she tends to focus sharply on the small areas of greatest connection. I think the project succeeds, as far as it goes. It is not a book that radically changed how I think about history or political struggle, but it definitely offered a corrective to despair, which is really the point. And there were a few eye-opening ideas along the way.
Solnit’s central strength, one which I admire and always find myself drawn to, is broad historical perspective.
At a structural level, the book did sometimes seem a bit squishy. There were moments when it felt vaguely inspirational, more than convincingly hopeful. There were also revelatory moments of insight, though—the notion at the end of the book, for example, that everything is fundamentally a process, rather than an object. “We are not nouns: we are verbs.” For me that’s quite a different way of viewing the world, and though it might seem just pithy, I think it connects to the deeper notion that all things are in flux. Nothing is finished. Not only does that give us some reason to hope for positive change, it also reminds us to stay alert to the ways things can come undone.
Solnit’s central strength, one which I admire and always find myself drawn to, is broad historical perspective.
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, the ingredients of change over years, decades, centuries. If you don’t see time on the scale of change, you don’t see change.It’s a crucial thing to remember, as a defense against the despair that can follow when a threat seems insurmountable.
At a structural level, the book did sometimes seem a bit squishy. There were moments when it felt vaguely inspirational, more than convincingly hopeful. There were also revelatory moments of insight, though—the notion at the end of the book, for example, that everything is fundamentally a process, rather than an object. “We are not nouns: we are verbs.” For me that’s quite a different way of viewing the world, and though it might seem just pithy, I think it connects to the deeper notion that all things are in flux. Nothing is finished. Not only does that give us some reason to hope for positive change, it also reminds us to stay alert to the ways things can come undone.
Read
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)
May 17, 2026
Die „notes“ im Untertitel sind akkurat, denn dieses Buch wirkt unfertig. Es gibt viele wirklich wunderschöne Passagen, kluge Beobachtungen und Perspektiven aber dazwischen ist unklar was das alles bedeutet, wo Solnit hin will.
Im Grunde geht es hier um zwei Argumente:
- in den letzten 50 Jahren hat sich die Welt dramatisch verändert, nicht auf einmal aber Stück für Stück und daraus lässt sich Hoffnung für die Zukunft schöpfen.
-und: was wir gerade beobachten ist ein Backlash gegen diese massiv veränderte Welt, dieser Backlash könnte auch eine Supernova sein, das letzte aufleuchten eines sterbenden Sterns.
Fand ich jetzt nicht soo innovativ (vielleicht aber auch weil viele Themen mir aus ihren Newslettern des letzten Jahres bekannt sind) aber kann man trotzdem lesen, ist eine gute Erinnerung einen Schritt zurück zu machen und mehr Kontext zu sehen und schön geschrieben. Aber wenn ihr noch nichts von Solnit gelesen habt, dann definitiv mit Hope in the Dark anfangen.
3,5⭐️
Im Grunde geht es hier um zwei Argumente:
- in den letzten 50 Jahren hat sich die Welt dramatisch verändert, nicht auf einmal aber Stück für Stück und daraus lässt sich Hoffnung für die Zukunft schöpfen.
-und: was wir gerade beobachten ist ein Backlash gegen diese massiv veränderte Welt, dieser Backlash könnte auch eine Supernova sein, das letzte aufleuchten eines sterbenden Sterns.
Fand ich jetzt nicht soo innovativ (vielleicht aber auch weil viele Themen mir aus ihren Newslettern des letzten Jahres bekannt sind) aber kann man trotzdem lesen, ist eine gute Erinnerung einen Schritt zurück zu machen und mehr Kontext zu sehen und schön geschrieben. Aber wenn ihr noch nichts von Solnit gelesen habt, dann definitiv mit Hope in the Dark anfangen.
3,5⭐️
June 27, 2026
I adore Rebecca Solnit for her smart, positive yet thoughtful perspective and I wish there were more political thinkers like her. It‘s such a fascinating way of navigating and thinking about our time!
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.
May 24, 2026
On the plus side, the book was short (147 pp with endnotes) and I did learn something about native American history and current day status as well as about other specific people and groups involved in civil rights, voting rights, marriage rights, gay and gender rights, equal pay, upending misogyny, and the overall fight for equality and against injustice in the U.S. Some chapters hung together better than others -- I especially appreciated chapters 5 and 6, Shadows of the Past and Disconnectors -- and there were small gems scattered throughout, e.g., concerning the authoritarian's need to command reality and to define it in dogmatic terms, in terms of binary categories ("a politics of sequestration"), though actual reality is ambiguous and uncertain, with overlap and blur; and hyper-individualism's rejection of systemic explanations for problems in favour of blaming individuals, and in fact their overarching antisystemic worldview that denies anything is (or should be) connected to anything else because "freedom" means that individuals are free of ties that bind us to each other, and as Cory Doctorow extrapolates, "if you reject the very idea that problems are systemic, then you have no use for institutions" [except possibly religious institutions], which are the only effective response to systemic problems, and this primes rejection of science in favour of individual solutions. On the negative side, this book -- which, in fairness, is subtitled Notes on a World of Change -- often felt like a disjointed laundry list of arbitrary events, people, and pieces of the threads of progress. Having read some of her other work, especially on nature and walking, I expected a more poetic and coherent book. I didn't derive a lot of hope from the book but it does offer alternative perspective to despair and doom by reminding us that changes that seem sudden aren't, they have been built over time by small actions and incrementally changing attitudes; that while laws may come and go, it's underlying attitudes that determine the tenor of a culture; and that history is full of things that once seemed unlikely or impossible (which, yes, all of these are potentially double-edged swords).
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."
June 8, 2026
Solnit’s most propulsive and dynamic book out of her recent batch of shorter works. Connecting so many interesting dots - from contemporary Indigenous activism to intersecting anti-racist struggles to ecological visions. It feels odd that there is so little about the disability community’s own resistance, activism and achievements in a book like this, even with Solnit’s early caveat that this wouldn’t be a total or expansive text.
June 20, 2026
3.5 rounded up
June 25, 2026
A well-needed dose of hope and thoughtful optimism.
June 7, 2026
Her optimism is soooo powerful and soothing to read
May 15, 2026
After I buy this book, I am going to read it again. It is filled with so much to ponder I want to start over and do just that…ponder. The author has a way of writing that is accessible which is greatly appreciated by me. Additionally, her life experiences are worth learning about.
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.
June 15, 2026
This was the book of thoughtful explanations, laced with hope, I needed to try to make sense of today’s world and the fires erupting around us as democracy is threatened, our climate worsens, and civil rights are abraded. This is meant, I think, as a sequel to 2016’s Hope in the Dark, and surveys a world that has changed since she wrote those pieces and since many of the social and environmental advances made in the 1960s through 2000s. In this book, the essays progress from one to the other in a linear thought-progression, deconstructing what has occurred in our world and what it may mean, and she emphasizes that “the Beginning Comes After the End” over and over again. The push-back may very well be a death-knell of patriarchy’s last grasp on privileged power as the rest of the world changes around them. One hopes. She blends clear, strong prose with some great insights, and a beautiful blend of word choices and poetic and journalistic Styles. She rallies the reader and informs them about climate and cultural changes, from civil rights to women’s choice to the plight and resilience of Indigenous Peoples. I found the all the essays were very valuable but I will read the essay “The Disconnectors” (64) again and again as it clarified so much for me. Her definition and explanation of the “vision of interconnection” and the “backlash” of brutal politics we are currently experiencing is chilling and hopeful all at the same time. Each essay is a beautiful pearl that makes up this shining necklace of a book of essays as the author builds her case for hope and true change. She is a powerful and contemplative writer. There is an excellent compilation of Notes at the end with her attributions of her research, and an engaging Acknowledgement. Readalikes may be Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, Maris Kreizman’s I Want to Burn this Place Down, and anything by Bill McKibben.
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 28, 2026
This book was given to me as a gift, but reading it was one too. I love Solnit’s writing and really appreciate the perspective she offers as someone who has participated in social and environmental activist movements for the last several decades. Despite all that appears to be going wrong, there really is so much to hope for.
“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.” -David Graeber
“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.” -David Graeber
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.
May 26, 2026
I appreciate the positivity, even though it's hard to feel much of it.
June 18, 2026
Hopeful- necessary right now
June 21, 2026
One of the brilliant authors of my lifetime, love her thought provoking content
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