The Beginning Comes After the End by Rebecca Solnit

A new book by Rebecca Solnit came out yesterday; it’s called The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change (Amazon). The synopsis:

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.

I feel like maybe I should read this. I need some hope about the world.

See also Solnit’s recent Longreads Questionnaire.

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• The Beginning Comes After the End