A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

(Paperback)

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How do we respond to disaster What expressions of care and solidarity might we find among the debris A Paradise Built in Hell is a study of five major disasters - the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the Halifax explosion of 1917, the Mexico City earthquake of 1985, the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina - and the expressions of altruism, generosity and resourcefulness that emerged in the wake of these tragedies. The result is a sweeping history of some of the foundational events in the modern history of North America, and a meditation on community: challenging us to look afresh at society, and what these models of local, collaborative politics might look like carried through into everyday life.

Reviews

An eye-opening account of how much hope and solidarity emerges in the face of sudden disaster . . . [These lessons] offer deep comfort now, as antidotes not just to feelings of helplessness but loneliness -- David Wallace-Wells
[An] expansive argument about human resilience . . . Though Solnit mobilizes decades of sociological research to support her argument, the chapters themselves move effortlessly through subtle philosophical readings and vivid narrations * The New Yorker *
Thought-provoking . . . captivating and compelling . . . there's a hopeful, optimistic, even contagious quality to this superb book * Los Angeles Times *
Far-reaching and large-spirited * San Francisco Chronicle *
What will it be like to live not on the relatively stable planet that civilization has known throughout the ten thousand years of the Holocene, but on the amped-up and careening planet we're quickly creating With her remarkable and singular book, A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit has thought harder about the answer to that question than anyone else. Her answer is strangely and powerfully hopeful. As she proves with inspired historiography, disasters often produce remarkable temporary communities--paradises of a sort amid the rubble, where people, acting on their own and without direction from the authorities, manage to provide for each other * The New York Review of Books *
Stirring . . . fascinating . . . presents a withering critique of modern capitalist society by examining five catastrophes . . . Her account of these events are so stirring that her book is worth reading for its storytelling alone. . . . [An] exciting and important contribution to our understanding of ourselves * The Washington Post *

Author Bio

Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books, including Orwell's Roses, Recollections of My Non-Existence, The Faraway Nearby, Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, River of Shadows and A Paradise Built in Hell. She is also the author of many essays on feminism, activism, social change, hope, and the climate crisis. She lives in San Francisco and writes regularly for the Guardian. She lives in San Francisco.