New Releases by Rebecca Solnit

»Das beste Buch des Jahres.« Lena Dunham Rebecca Solnit ist eine der wichtigsten feministischen Denkerinnen unserer Zeit. Ihr Essay Wenn Männer mir die Welt erklären hat weltweit für Furore gesorgt: Scharfsinnig analysiert Solnit männliche Arroganz, die die Kommunikation zwischen Männern und Frauen erschwert. Voller Biss, Komik und stilistischer Eleganz widmet sie sich in ihren Essays dem augenblicklichen Zustand der Geschlechterverhältnisse. Ein Mann, der mit seinem Wissen prahlt, in der Annahme, dass seine Gesprächspartnerin ohnehin keine Ahnung hat - jede Frau hat diese Situation schon einmal erlebt. Rebecca Solnit untersucht dieses Phänomen und weitere Mechanismen von Sexismus. Sie deckt Missstände auf, die meist gar nicht als solche erkannt werden, weil Übergriffe auf Frauen akzeptiert sind, als normal gelten. Dabei befasst sich die Autorin mit der Kernfamilie als Institution genauso wie mit Gewalt gegen Frauen, französischen Sex-Skandalen, Virginia Woolf oder postkolonialen Machtverhältnissen. Leidenschaftlich, präzise und mit einem radikal neuen Blick zeigt Rebecca Solnit auf, was längst noch nicht selbstverständlich ist: Für die Gleichberechtigung von Frauen und Männern gilt es, die Stimme zu erheben.

«Un libro acuto e audace... tipicamente Solnit.» Publishers Weekly «La voce della Solnit non ha paura, nel suo arco ha frecce potenti.» The Independent «In questi saggi accessibili a tutti l''autrice affronta i grandi temi del gender e del potere. Una lettura fondamentale per chi vuole approfondire la discussione sul femminismo e la società contemporanea.» San Francisco Chronicle Ci sono molti modi per sentirsi superiori, più forti, più bravi, più sapienti e potenti. La sopraffazione non passa solo per la violenza fisica, l’umiliazione, la dipendenza economica, ma anche da meccanismi più semplici, da comportamenti più sottili e socialmente accettati da tutti. La violenza sulle donne comincia anche da una conversazione dove le donne vengono messe a tacere. Cosa non funziona in queste conversazioni? Gli uomini pensano erroneamente di sapere cose che le donne non sanno e, senza farsi domande, iniziano a spiegarle. In questa selezione dei suoi scritti femministi più noti, Rebecca Solnit spiega perché ciò accade e ne sottolinea il lato grottesco. Con la sua prosa elegante e incisiva mette a nudo alcuni degli aspetti più imbarazzanti, crudi e folli della società maschilista, invitando a riflettere tutti coloro che ne hanno il coraggio.

In Mannen leggen me altijd alles uit maakt Rebecca Solnit duidelijk hoe onze samenleving nog altijd is doortrokken van ongelijkheid tussen de seksen. In het titelessay introduceert ze het verschijnsel dat inmiddels bekendstaat als ‘mansplaining’. Waarom gaan mannen ervan uit dat ze alles weten? En, minstens zo erg, waarom laten vrouwen zich gewillig de mond snoeren? Marja Pruis laat in het voorwoord haar licht schijnen op het fenomeen Solnit. ‘Verhelderend, geruststellend en nog grappig ook. Mijn boek van het jaar.’ LENA DUNHAM ‘Solnit is idealistisch op de enige geloofwaardige manier: woedend op de werkelijkheid zonder blind te zijn voor de complexiteit.’ DE GROENE AMSTERDAMMER ‘Scherpzinnige, eigentijdse reflecties over de ongelijkheid tussen mannen en vrouwen.’ THE NEW YORK TIMES

A collection of feminist essays steeped in "Solnit''s unapologetically observant and truth-speaking voice on toxic, violent masculinity" ( The Los Angeles Review). In a timely and incisive follow-up to her national bestseller Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit offers sharp commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. In characteristic style, "Solnit draw[s] anecdotes of female indignity or male aggression from history, social media, literature, popular culture, and the news . . . The main essay in the book is about the various ways that women are silenced, and Solnit focuses upon the power of storytelling—the way that who gets to speak, and about what, shapes how a society understands itself and what it expects from its members. The Mother of All Questions poses the thesis that telling women''s stories to the world will change the way that the world treats women, and it sets out to tell as many of those stories as possible" ( The New Yorker). "There''s a new feminist revolution—open to people of all genders—brewing right now and Rebecca Solnit is one of its most powerful, not to mention beguiling, voices."—Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times–bestselling author of Natural Causes "Short, incisive essays that pack a powerful punch." — Publishers Weekly "A keen and timely commentary on gender and feminism. Solnit''s voice is calm, clear, and unapologetic; each essay balances a warm wit with confident, thoughtful analysis, resulting in a collection that is as enjoyable and accessible as it is incisive." — Booklist

Published in conjunction with the exhibition Mona Hatoum: Terra infirma organized by The Menil Collection, Houston, October 13, 2017-February 28, 2018.

Solnit reflexiona sobre los logros cruciales que han conseguido los activistas de base en multitud de protestas y revoluciones, desde las más conocidas y estudiadas como el movimiento de los derechos civiles estadounidenses o la caída del Muro de Berlín, a otras como las exitosas protestas contra las pruebas nucleares en Nevada o la restauración del río Los Ángeles.

"[A] landmark book . . . Solnit illustrates how the uprisings that begin on the streets can upend the status quo and topple authoritarian regimes" ( Vice). 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 activists 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 argues 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 our times in an unforgettable new edition of this classic book. "One of the best books of the 21st century." — The Guardian "No writer has better understood the mix of fear and possibility, peril and exuberance that''s marked this new millennium." —Bill McKibben, New York Times–bestselling author of Falter "An elegant reminder that activist victories are easily forgotten, and that they often come in extremely unexpected, roundabout ways." — The New Yorker

"A beautiful, absorbing, tragic book."—Larry McMurtry In 1851, a war began in what would become Yosemite National Park, a war against the indigenous inhabitants. A century later–in 1951–and a hundred and fifty miles away, another war began when the U.S. government started setting off nuclear bombs at the Nevada Test Site. It was called a nuclear testing program, but functioned as a war against the land and people of the Great Basin. In this foundational book of landscape theory and environmental thinking, Rebecca Solnit explores our national Eden and Armageddon and offers a pathbreaking history of the west, focusing on the relationship between culture and its implementation as politics. In a new preface, she considers the continuities and changes of these invisible wars in the context of our current climate change crisis, and reveals how the long arm of these histories continue to inspire her writing and hope.

A New York Times Notable Book Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award A personal, lyrical narrative about storytelling and empathy, from the author of Orwell''s Roses Apricots. Her mother''s disintegrating memory. An invitation to Iceland. Illness. These are Rebecca Solnit''s raw materials, but The Faraway Nearby goes beyond her own life, as she spirals out into the stories she heard and read—from fairy tales to Mary Shelley''s Frankenstein—that helped her navigate her difficult passge. Solnit takes us into the lives of others—an arctic cannibal, the young Che Guevara among the leprosy afflicted, a blues musician, an Icelandic artist and her labyrinth—to understand warmth and coldness, kindness and imagination, decay and transformation, making art and making self. This captivating, exquisitely written exploration of the forces that connect us and the way we tell our stories is a tour de force of association, a marvelous Russian doll of a book that is a fitting companion to Solnit''s much-loved A Field Guide to Getting Lost.

The National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author delivers a collection of essays that serve as the perfect "antidote to mansplaining" ( The Stranger). In her comic, scathing essay "Men Explain Things to Me," Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don''t, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters. She ends on a serious note— because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, "He''s trying to kill me!" This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf''s embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women. "In this series of personal but unsentimental essays, Solnit gives succinct shorthand to a familiar female experience that before had gone unarticulated, perhaps even unrecognized." — The New York Times "Essential feminist reading." — The New Republic "This slim book hums with power and wit." — Boston Globe "Solnit tackles big themes of gender and power in these accessible essays. Honest and full of wit, this is an integral read that furthers the conversation on feminism and contemporary society." — San Francisco Chronicle "Essential." — Marketplace "Feminist, frequently funny, unflinchingly honest and often scathing in its conclusions." — Salon

This anthology of Solnits essential essays from the past ten years takes the reader from the Pyrenees to the U.S.-Mexican border, from open sky to the deepest mines and offers a panoramic world view enriched by the authors characteristically provocative, inspiring, and hopeful observations.

“An intriguing amalgam of personal memoir, philosophical speculation, natural lore, cultural history, and art criticism.” —Los Angeles Times From the award-winning author of Orwell''s Roses, a stimulating exploration of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown Written as a series of autobiographical essays, A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Rebecca Solnit''s life to explore issues of uncertainty, trust, loss, memory, desire, and place. Solnit is interested in the stories we use to navigate our way through the world, and the places we traverse, from wilderness to cities, in finding ourselves, or losing ourselves. While deeply personal, her own stories link up to larger stories, from captivity narratives of early Americans to the use of the color blue in Renaissance painting, not to mention encounters with tortoises, monks, punk rockers, mountains, deserts, and the movie Vertigo. The result is a distinctive, stimulating voyage of discovery.

A meditation on the dilemmas and desires for home that combines the writings of art critic and cultural historian Rebecca Solnit with painter Stefan K]rten''s lush images of domestic interiors, buildings and landscapes. Solnit reflects on emotional privatization, real-estate fetishism, and aesthetic pleasure, while Kurten''s paintings of stale bourgeois interiors and suburban homes project a dogged attempt to make life perfect, at least on the surface. His armchairs, teapots and planter boxes suggest that we are living in a peculiar state of safety and bliss. Together, the text and images question the equation of ideal houses with ideal lives, the images that shape our perception of childhood, and our notion of a fulfilled adulthood.

How has San Francisco''s urban landscape changed in the hundred years since the earthquake and cataclysmic firestorms that destroyed three-quarters of the city in 1906? For this provocative rephotography project, photographer Klett has gone to the same locations pictured in 45 photographs taken in the days following the 1906 earthquake and fires, and precisely duplicated each photograph''s vantage point. The result is a powerful comparison that challenges our preconceptions about time, history, and culture. Features an essay by noted environmental historian Philip Fradkin on the events surrounding and following the 1906 earthquake, which he describes as \"the equivalent of an intensive, three-day bombing raid.\"--Publisher description.

A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, The Mark Lynton History Prize, and the Sally Hacker Prize for the History of Technology “A panoramic vision of cultural change” —The New York Times Through the story of the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge, the author of Orwell''s Roses explores what it was about California in the late 19th-century that enabled it to become such a center of technological and cultural innovation The world as we know it today began in California in the late 1800s, and Eadweard Muybridge had a lot to do with it. This striking assertion is at the heart of Rebecca Solnit’s new book, which weaves together biography, history, and fascinating insights into art and technology to create a boldly original portrait of America on the threshold of modernity. The story of Muybridge—who in 1872 succeeded in capturing high-speed motion photographically—becomes a lens for a larger story about the acceleration and industrialization of everyday life. Solnit shows how the peculiar freedoms and opportunities of post–Civil War California led directly to the two industries—Hollywood and Silicon Valley—that have most powerfully defined contemporary society.

Cette étude divertissante considère la marche comme un art, avec ses maîtres, ses lieux de culte et son histoire. Rebecca Solnit évoque les différentes écoles de cet art qui célèbrent la beauté des paysages et du grand air. Par ailleurs, elle étudie les pèlerinages, les marches de protestation, les flâneries urbaines, le nomadisme des comédiens et des musiciens, les voyages à pied des compagnons du devoir et différentes pérégrinations qui, parfois, constituent de véritables rites de passage pour les jeunes. Le rythme de la marche a été ressenti par des philosophes et des écrivains comme propice à la réflexion, voire à la création. S''appuyant sur des citations et des anecdotes, Rebecca Solnit montre à quel point on saisit le monde à travers le corps et le corps à travers le monde. Mais ce " livre parcours " comprend aussi un véritable réquisitoire contre tout ce qui, aujourd''hui, empêche l''exercice de la marche. La rue est un espace démocratique par excellence, et la libre circulation du promeneur en ville et à la campagne une revendication plus nécessaire que jamais... A notre époque, l''art de la marche devient une pratique fondamentale et subversive dans les pays occidentaux.

A passionate, thought-provoking exploration of walking as a political and cultural activity, from the author of Orwell''s Roses Drawing together many histories--of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores--Rebecca Solnit creates a fascinating portrait of the range of possibilities presented by walking. Arguing that the history of walking includes walking for pleasure as well as for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit focuses on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture, from philosophers to poets to mountaineers. She profiles some of the most significant walkers in history and fiction--from Wordsworth to Gary Snyder, from Jane Austen''s Elizabeth Bennet to Andre Breton''s Nadja--finding a profound relationship between walking and thinking and walking and culture. Solnit argues for the necessity of preserving the time and space in which to walk in our ever more car-dependent and accelerated world.

A multidisciplinary compilation of nineteen incisive essays ranges from the formality of traditional art criticism to intimate, lyrical meditations as they explore nuclear test sites, the meaning of national borders and geographical features, and the idea of the feminine and the sublime.