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bootman's review against another edition
5.0
Fantastic book, and Rebecca Solnit is an excellent writer, but the style of the book just isn’t for me. I’m sure 90% of the people interested in social and political change would love this book, so definitely get a copy if you fall into that category. My only issue is that I’m just not a fan of books that are stories about people and history, so that’s a personal thing. Rebecca does an excellent job discussing how activists have managed to maintain hope and fight for change, which is extremely inspiring. It’s a much-needed book, but it’s just not my personal style of book I like to read.
celbelrai's review against another edition
Eh, discontinuing after a couple chapters. First, it's a bit much to understand her points as they relate to the Bush era of my childhood. Secondly, it has struck one note repeatedly: hope is not optimism so much as a realistic understanding that the future has not occurred yet.
jesseb's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
2.5
no thoughts head empty
megthegrand's review against another edition
4.0
I liked this book, especially ideas about change being incremental and rarely straightforward, but would have liked if the author offered more possible solutions and outcomes.
niniane's review against another edition
3.0
After the first 20%, I started skimming it. It feels dated, since it refers to events of 2003 at length.
the pattern of the essays is that they describe a large number of depressing events, and then argue why we should have hope -- because we still made one piece of progress, or because things could always turn around. Unfortunately we now know how some of those things turned out, and many turned out poorly. So this book does not have a huge amount of credibility.
the pattern of the essays is that they describe a large number of depressing events, and then argue why we should have hope -- because we still made one piece of progress, or because things could always turn around. Unfortunately we now know how some of those things turned out, and many turned out poorly. So this book does not have a huge amount of credibility.