Napa Valley isn’t the only wine region in the U.S. (“Every disaster leaves a small percentage of people committed to ideals they might not have found otherwise” even as some disasters “crack open fissures between government and civil society.”) In the same essay, she visits “stunning” Hiroshima, which has redefined itself since the atomic bomb as a “city of peace.” She also manages to find common ground between the Occupy movement and the Irish potato famine memorial in New York. In addition, Solnit writes about the aftermath of the great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, witnessing firsthand the wreckage and debris while observing the large number of Japanese youth who volunteered their services to help the distressed.
Once the countercultural capital of bohemians, eccentrics and dissidents, the City by the Bay has turned into the city “that poets can’t afford,” she offers. She reflects on the Arab Spring, links race and class and country music with environmentalism and unpacks the BP oil spill in the Gulf and the effects of coastal erosion on the region.Īlso here are discussions on the American West, specifically the Colorado River and the fight over who controls the water supply cautionary tales of ruin and revival in Detroit and the controversy surrounding the Google bus that transports workers from San Francisco to Silicon Valley.
It also involves, among other things, an exploration of its ecology and culture and democracy, so Solnit examines the details of place, whether the “blue of icebergs” or dancing in the streets of New Orleans or “occupying” the streets of New York. To write about a place - to truly understand it - involves more than just describing its geography, as Solnit points out in her introduction. It’s a travel book in the broadest, most elastic and most democratic sense as Solnit comments on history, art and community, politics and many other topics. In truth, it might best be described as a series of essays - 30 in all - that traverse the globe, from Mexico to the Arctic, Haiti to Iceland and points and places and ideas in between. But no matter what label you attach to it, the important thing to remember about this book is that it was written by Rebecca Solnit, one of the best nonfiction writers working today. It’s really an anthology disguised as an encyclopedia. It’s sort of an encyclopedia and sort of isn’t. “Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness”
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