The author looks at stories of both community success and failure. The author’s central thesis-which she develops by drawing on a wide range of philosophers and writers, including William James, Viktor Frankl, Mikhail Bakhtin and William Wordsworth-is that disasters reveal the human ability to imagine and spontaneously create communities that fulfill our desire for “connection, participation, altruism, and purposefulness.” Relying on extensive archival research and oral histories, Solnit considers community responses to a variety of disasters, including the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the Halifax military explosion of 1917 and the bombing of London during World War II, as well as lethal heat-waves, terrorist attacks, nuclear accidents, hurricanes and other natural disasters. Solnit ( Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, 2007, etc.) examines what disasters tell us about how human societies work, where they fail or succeed during and after moments of crisis and how the small-scale utopias that sometimes emerge in the midst of tragedy might offer hope for larger change. It points to a new vision of what society could become-one that is less authoritarian and fearful, more collaborative and local.Historical and philosophical investigation into human responses to disaster and the possibilities for community and democratic participation that can arise from them. A Paradise Built in Hell is an investigation of the moments of altruism, resourcefulness, and generosity that arise amid disaster's grief and disruption and considers their implications for everyday life. That joy reveals an ordinarily unmet yearning for community, purposefulness, and meaningful work that disaster often provides.
The most startling thing about disasters, according to award-winning author Rebecca Solnit, is not merely that so many people rise to the occasion, but that they do so with joy. ” - San Francisco ChronicleĪ stirring investigation into what happens in the aftermath of disaster, from the author of Orwell's Roses “Solnit argues that disasters are opportunities as well as oppressions, each one a summons to rediscover the powerful engagement and joy of genuine altruism, civic life, grassroots community, and meaningful work. “A landmark book that gives impassioned challenge to the social meaning of disasters” - The New York Times Book Review
Chosen as a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune
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