Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

184 pages

Published March 15, 2016 by Haymarket Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-60846-576-7

No rating (1 review)

A book as powerful and influential as Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me, her Hope in the Dark was written to counter the despair of radicals at a moment when they were focused on their losses and had turned their back to the victories behind them—and the unimaginable changes soon to come. In it, she makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argued that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next.

Now, with a moving new introduction explaining how the book came about …

A book as powerful and influential as Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me, her Hope in the Dark was written to counter the despair of radicals at a moment when they were focused on their losses and had turned their back to the victories behind them—and the unimaginable changes soon to come. In it, she makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argued that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next.

Now, with a moving new introduction explaining how the book came about and a new afterword that helps teach us how to hope and act in our unnerving world, she brings a new illumination to the darkness of 2016 in an unforgettable new edition of this classic book.

2 editions

caracabe reviewed Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit

Review of Hope in the Dark

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It would be easy to take discouragement from this book that argues for radical hope. It was first published in 2004 and reissued with added material in 2016. Those times were bright compared to today, and the despair we felt back then seems almost quaint. Some of the victories Solnit encourages us to remember have since been taken away, and others, such as gay marriage, are endangered. Some of the groups and movements she praises have dwindled or disappeared. But as Solnit reminds us, nothing is permanent. Even a temporary victory makes a difference, and things can change as suddenly and surprisingly for the better as for the worse. New movements appear, tactics change. “It’s always too soon to go home. And it’s always too soon to calculate effect.”