hope in the dark untold histories wild possibilities

Now, with a moving new introduction explaining how the book came about and a new afterword that helps teach us how to hope and act in our unnerving world, she brings a new illumination to the darkness of 2016 in an unforgettable new edition of this classic book. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argued that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next. In it, she makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable.

'An elegant reminder that activist victories are easily forgotten, and that they often come in extremely unexpected, roundabout ways.'Ī book as powerful and influential as Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me, her Hope in the Dark was written to counter the despair of radicals at a moment when they were focused on their losses and had turned their back to the victories behind them-and the unimaginable changes soon to come. 'No writer has better understood the mix of fear and possibility, peril and exuberance that's marked this new millennium.' Tracing the footsteps of the last century's thinkers - including Woolf, Gandhi, Borges, Benjamin and Havel - Solnit conjures a timeless vision of cause and effect that will light our way through the dark, and lead us to profound and effective political engagement.“One of the Best Books of the 21st Century.” Hope in the Dark is a paean to optimism in the uncertainty of the twenty-first century. This exquisite work traces a history of activism and social change over the past five decades - from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the worldwide marches against the war in Iraq. Īt a time when political, environmental and social gloom can seem overpowering, this remarkable book offers a lucid, affirmative and well-argued case for hope.

Tracing the footsteps of the last century's thinkers - including Woolf, Gandhi, Borges, Benjamin and. At a time when political, environmental and social gloom can seem overpowering, this remarkable book offers a lucid, affirmative and well-argued case for hope.

Hope in the dark untold histories wild possibilities