Hope In The Dark

Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope

This book argues for a new understanding of the breakthroughs that have changed our lives and our society. Multi-award winning columnist, author and activist Rebecca Solnit traces a history of people power over five decades and provides both a defence of protest and an exploration of hope in dark times.

Analysing recent breakthroughs - from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the US Supreme Court rulings in support of gay marriage - and contemporary movements - from the worldwide marches against the war in Iraq to the Zapatista uprising in Mexico - Solnit's grasp of change in the twentieth century creates a manifesto for optimism in the twenty-first.

"Great . . . this book offers us the key to liberation - and that key is hope." Tony Benn

"Like Simon Schama, Solnit is a cultural historian in the desert-mystic mode, trailing ideas like swarms of butterflies." Harper's

"Radical, humane, witty, sometimes wonderfully dandyish, at other times, impassioned and serious." Alain De Botton (on Wanderlust)