The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness

by Rebecca Solnit

Overview

The incomparable Rebecca Solnit, author of more than a dozen acclaimed, prizewinning books of nonfiction including Men Explain Things To Me, brings the same dazzling writing to the essays in The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness; hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "globally wide-ranging and topically urgent and the Boston Globe as "luminous and precise.". 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595347534
Publisher:	Trinity University Press
Publication date:	11/03/2015
Edition description:	First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

San Francisco writer Rebecca Solnit is the author of fifteen books about art, landscape, public and collective life, ecology, politics, hope, meandering, reverie, and memory. They include Men Explain Things To Me, The Faraway Nearby; Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster; Storming the Gates of Paradise; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities; Wanderlust: A History of Walking; As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art; and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, for which she received a Guggenheim fellowship, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award. Solnit has worked with climate change, Native American land rights, antinuclear, human rights, and antiwar issues as an activist and journalist. She is a contributing editor to Harper’s and a frequent contributor to the political site Tomdispatch.com and has made her living as an independent writer since 1988.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Cyclopedia of an Arctic Expedition
The Butterfly and the Boiling Point: Reflections on the Arab Spring and After
Rattlesnake in Mailbox: Cults, Creeps, California in the 1970s
Concrete in Paradise: Some Pictures of Coastal California
Detroit Arcadia: Exploring the Post-American Landscape
Dry Lands: The Colorado River and Hydrological Madness of the West
One Nation under Elvis: Environmentalism for Everyone
Winged Mercury and the Golden Calf: Heavy Metal Histories
Oil and Water: The BP Spill in the Gulf
In Haiti, Words Can Kill
Icebergs and Shadows: Further Adventures in the Landscape of Hope
Inside Out, or Interior Space (and Interior Decoration)
Notes from Nowhere: Iceland’s Polite Dystopia
The Volcano Erupts: Iceland in Upheaval
The Great Tohuko Earthquake and Tsunami: Aftermaths in Japan
Arrival Gates: The Inari Shrine in Kyoto, Japan
Journey to the Center (on Elin Hansdottir’s Labyrinth Path)
Letter to a Dead Man on the Occupation of Hope
Apologies to Mexico: The Drug Trade and GNP (Gross National Pain)
Reconstructing the Story of the Storm: New Orleans Five Years After
We Won’t Bow Down: Carnival and Resistance in New Orleans
The Google Bus: Silicon Valley Invades
We’re Breaking Up: Noncommunications in the Silicon Age
Pale Bus, Pale Rider: Silicon Valley Invades, Cont’d
On the Dirtiness of Laundry and the Strength of Sister: Or, Mysteries of Henry David Thoreau, Unsolved
Revolutionary Plots: On Urban Gardening
The Visibility Wars
Welcome to the Impossible World: For the Children of Orwell
Revolution of the Snails: Encounters with the Zapatistas
Credits and Acknowledgments
Index

Editorial Reviews

"What to call a journalist who writes about place while avoiding the subjects of luxury hotels, remote restaurants and urbane oddities? Not a travel writer, surely. And not an adventurer. One could do worse than answer with 'Rebecca Solnit'."—— New York Times Book Review

"Insights that are acute and meaningful.... [It] leads to a different, more layered understanding of the world around us."—— Utne Reader

"Thoughtful, eloquent and often inspiring essays."—— Kirkus Reviews

"The 29 essays that make up Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness are global in their reach, combining meditations on history, politics, science, art, literature, climate change and natural disasters, and take us from the snowy tundra of the Arctic to the carnival-filled streets of New Orleans."—— The Daily Beast

"One mesmerizing volume...these lyrical essays stress the importance of collective action and community."— — Publishers Weekly

"Refreshingly coherent, profoundly smart."— — BBC News

"Globally wide-ranging and topically urgent . . . will surely solidify her reputation as one of our most independent and necessary freelance intellectuals."—— Los Angeles Review of Books

"An amazing potpourri...she brings a clarity to the messiness of ideas."—— Minnesota Public Radio

"One of our most provocative, thoughtful essayists."—— Austin American-Statesman

“A sublime collection of essays. . . . a remarkable read.”— — Brain Pickings

"Beautifully written and fiercely argued....showcases the work of an impressive intellect and a brilliant writer."—— Shelf Awareness

"Whatever the subject, let’s just get out of the way and let the gifted woman write."—— Foreword Reviews

"One of the most magnificent writers of our time."—— The Guardian

"Solnit’s essays showcase the range and power not only of nonfiction, but of words themselves."— — The Rumpus

"Interesting, insightful and always surprising."—— Houston Chronicle

"Lives up to the promise of its ambitious title."— — KQED, San Francisco

"Solnit's finely wrought essays probe lofty issues in ways that make them feel intensely personal."—— Oprah Magazine

"Luminous and precise, Solnit persuades, educates, and inspires." —— Boston Globe

"It's sort of an encyclopedia and sort of isn't. It's really an anthology disguised as an encyclopedia. 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." —— Chicago Tribune

“Solnit has been compared to both Susan Sontag and Annie Dillard, though her writing is more lyrical and oblique than Sontag’s and her engagement with nature more overtly political than Dillard’s.”— BookForum

“A book of surprises, astute thinking and worthwhile ideas.”— Seattle Times

“Her writing takes wing . . . carrying us on a flight that crosses a landscape of sadness, of happiness, through consciousness, desire—what can only be described as a healing enlargement of one's soul—and toward beauty.”— Mother Jones

“A remarkable piece of work.”— San Antonio Express-News

“Probably the smartest person around in most rooms she enters.”— Texas Public Radio

“Solnit has a formidable intellect, rapacious curiosity, and the writing chops to join together disparate subjects in sophisticated, entertaining arguments about modern society.”— Powell's Books

“Solnit's signature blend of history, science, justice, and the personal illustrates each location just as she finds it, with a sense of specificity, sensitivity, and empathy.”— Elle

From the Publisher

It is tempting to compare Solnit to that other native Californian with an X-ray vision for silent despair—Joan Didion—but Solnit's pathos, if sometimes less poetic, often feels more serious and more earned.

The New York Times Book Review - Alice Gregory

2014-09-09
In her latest collection of previously published essays, Solnit (Men Explain Things to Me, 2014, etc.) explores troubled and troubling spaces and places that illuminate her concerns about community and power. How, asks the author, do individuals express their sense of connection to one another when they respond to disasters, such as hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the BP oil spill, and the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan? How do communities come together for their common good? What social and political forces create a truly civil society? Solnit's travels have taken her around the world, including Kyoto and Fukushima, Iceland, Mexico, Detroit and New Orleans: "Wherever I went," she writes, "I remained preoccupied with democracy and justice and popular power, with how change can be wrought in the streets and by retelling the story, with the power of stories to get things wrong as well as right…and with the beauties of light, space, and solidarity." Traversing time as well as space, she reflects on the social activism of the 1960s and '70s that gave rise to communes, organic farms, and queer rights and feminist movements; sometimes chaotic and unfocused, this activism, she believes, sparked later progressive changes. Solnit is a fan of peaceful revolutions, which makes her impatient with the passivity that she observed in Iceland, where people seem intimidated in the face of severe environmental problems. Argentina, she notes, stands as a strong example of a politically engaged society uniting in protest in the face of economic disaster. Astounded by Icelandic acquiescence, Solnit urges her own contemporaries to take action on such issues as climate change, drought, urban blight, the tainting of soil by heavy metals, irresponsible oil drilling and the use of toxic dispersants. In her 2006 commencement talk at the University of California, Solnit implored new graduates to remake the universe by changing stories of the past and reinventing stories for the future; that advice informs these thoughtful, eloquent and often inspiring essays.

Kirkus Reviews