Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

By Rebecca Solnit

In this remarkable work, 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 of movements that unites all the diverse and fragmentary issues of the eighties and nineties in our new century.

Rebecca Solnit's previous books include River of Shadows, Hollow City, As Eve Said to the Serpent, Savage Dreams and Wanderlust: A History of Walking. An activist and cultural historian, she writes about place, environment, politics, and culture. Rebecca Solnit is the recipient of the Lannan literary award and lives in San Francisco.

Hope in the Dark began as a single essay, "Acts of Hope," written and posted at Tomdispatch in May 2003, a bleak moment after the antiwar demonstrations had ended and the Bush administration had launched its war of choice in Iraq. It changed my own way of thinking about the world. This latest edition of the book also incorporates later essays Solnit has done for Tomdispatch like "The Great Grey Whale... Or, This Story Has No Moral."

**Comments on Hope in the Dark:**

San Francisco Chronicle: "Move over Joan Didion..."

Studs Terkel: "Seemingly lost in the woods of deceit and banality, bereft of hope, we are confronted by Rebecca Solnit and her astonishing flashlight. In a jewel of a book that is poetic in substance as well as style, she 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."

Mike Davis: "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 struggles--with persistence and courage--are indeed the seeds of kindness."

Newsday: "Can you imagine a cross between Joan Rivers and Simone de Beauvoir? I didn't think so, but no likelier hybrid comes to mind.... Solnit is the real activist deal: the type who gets arrested at nuclear test sites and mans the barricades at the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle. She's also the real freelance intellectual deal: the much rarer type who earns her living generating reams of thoughtful, wide-ranging nonfiction."

Hope in the Dark

Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

By Rebecca Solnit

"Seemingly lost in the woods of deceit and banality, bereft of hope, we are confronted by Rebecca Solnit and her astonishing flashlight. In a jewel of a book that is poetic in substance as well as style, she 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." --Studs Terkel

Nation Books