Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
by Rebecca SolnitAVAILABILITY: Usually ships within 2-5 days
Publication Date: 2006
Publisher: Avalon Publishing Group
Binding: Paperback
Topics: Social Movements, Spirituality & Religion
Description: When the first edition of 'Hope in the Dark' was published in mid-2004 it gained an instant cult audience. Many readers were so inspired by Solnit's book that they bought multiple copies to give to friends. This new, significantly expanded edition covers, among other things, the political territory of America and the world after George Bush's re-election.
Acclaimed author Rebecca Solnit draws on her life as a writer and activist, on the events of our moment, on our deepest past, to argue for hope - hope even in the dark. Solnit reminds us of how changed the world has been by the activism of the past five decades. Offering a dazzling account of some of the least expected of those changes, she proposes a vision of cause-and-effect relations that provides new grounds for political engagement in the present. Counting historic victories - from the fall of the Berlin wall to the Zapatista uprising to Seattle in 1999 to the worldwide marches against war in Iraq to Cancun in September 2003 - she traces the rise of a sophisticated, supple, nonviolent new movement that unites all the diverse and fragmentary issues of the eighties and nineties in our new century.
From the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the Zapatista uprising, from the Seattle protests of 1999 to the world-wide marches against the war in Iraq, writer and activist Rebecca Solnit finds in the new supple and nonviolent 'movement of movements' many reasons for hope despite the obvious immediate difficulties and setbacks. Studs Terkel writes about this 'jewel of a book':
Review(s): "In this inspired meditation on the very nature of action and the reasons one thing leads to another, Rebecca Solnit, with her customary intellectual penetration, freshness of expression, and high elegance, finds new springs of hope in dark times.".- Jonathan Schell
"I found Hope in the Dark fascinating, inspiring and beautifully written." George Monbiot
"A jewel of a book. (Solnit) reveals where we were, where we are, and the step-by-step advances that have been made in human rights, as we stubbornly stumble out of the darkness...It surges." - Studs Terkel
"The powerful in this world seem to want to frighten us into following their orders unquestioningly and this book offers us the key to liberation - and that key is hope." - Tony Benn
"In this extraordinary book, Rebecca Solnit's prose grows poetic wings that enable her to soar to a visionary height. the good news that she brings back is that our struggle - with persistence and courage - are indeed the seeds of kindness." - Mike Davis