The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The incomparable Rebecca Solnit, author of more than a dozen acclaimed, prizewinning books of nonfiction, brings the same dazzling writing to the essays in Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness. As the title suggests, the territory of Solnit’s concerns is vast, and in her signature alchemical style she combines commentary on history, justice, war and peace, and explorations of place, art, and community, all while writing with the lyricism of a poet to achieve incandescence and wisdom.
Gathered here are celebrated iconic essays along with little-known pieces that create a powerful survey of the world we live in, from the jungles of the Zapatistas in Mexico to the splendors of the Arctic. This rich collection tours places as diverse as Haiti and Iceland; movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring; an original take on the question of who did Henry David Thoreau’s laundry; and a searching look at what the hatred of country music really means.
Solnit moves nimbly from Orwell to Elvis, to contemporary urban gardening to 1970s California macramé and punk rock, and on to searing questions about the environment, freedom, family, class, work, and friendship. It’s no wonder she’s been compared in Bookforum to Susan Sontag and Annie Dillard and in the San Francisco Chronicle to Joan Didion.
The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness proves Rebecca Solnit worthy of the accolades and honors she’s received. Rarely can a reader find such penetrating critiques of our time and its failures leavened with such generous heapings of hope. Solnit looks back to history and the progress of political movements to find an antidote to despair in what many feel as lost causes. In its encyclopedic reach and its generous compassion, Solnit’s collection charts a way through the thickets of our complex social and political worlds. Her essays are a beacon for readers looking for alternative ideas in these imperiled times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Author and activist Solnit (The Faraway Nearby) synthesizes many different topics (urban gardening, ecology, activism, art, storytelling, culture, history, politics, democracy, etc.) into one mesmerizing volume of 29 previously published essays. These expansive essays range from the sheer beauty of an Arctic expedition to the "post-American landscape of Detroit," Iceland before and after the 2008 global financial meltdown, the Zapatista territory in Mexico, and Carnival in New Orleans. Solnit takes on the "hydrological madness" in the American West, the ongoing repercussions of the BP oil spill, the aftermath of Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the lack of face-to-face contact in the silicon age, the "violence" of climate change, Occupy Wall Street, and the Arab Spring, among other subjects. With discursive and poetic prose, she moves fluidly from the macram and decorative kitsch of the 1970s to how that "terrible" and "generative" decade planted the seeds for reproductive rights, grassroots politics, and organic farming. No matter how far Solnit ventures, she returns to her home landscape San Francisco, "once a great city of refuge for dissidents, queers, pacifists and experimentalists," now undergoing profound changes as a result of the tech boom and she bemoans how Silicon Valley has made California the center rather than the edge. Though she sees disaster looming in many quarters, she also finds generosity and resistance everywhere, and these lyrical essays stress the importance of collective action and community.