Published: 22/05/2025
ISBN: 9781803511702
Granta Books
pages

A Paradise Built in Hell

Rebecca Solnit

How do we respond to disaster? What expressions of care and solidarity might we find among the debris? A Paradise Built in Hell is a study of five major disasters in US history – the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the Halifax explosion of 1917, the Mexico City earthquake of 1985, the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina – and the expressions of altruism, generosity and resourcefulness that emerged in the wake of these tragedies. The result is a sweeping history of some of the foundational events in modern US history, and a meditation on community: challenging us to look afresh at society, and what these models of local, collaborative politics might look like carried through into everyday life.

An eye-opening account of how much hope and solidarity emerges in the face of sudden disaster . . . [These lessons] offer deep comfort now, as antidotes not just to feelings of helplessness but loneliness

David Wallace-Wells

[An] expansive argument about human resilience . . . Though Solnit mobilizes decades of sociological research to support her argument, the chapters themselves move effortlessly through subtle philosophical readings and vivid narrations

The New Yorker

Thought-provoking . . . captivating and compelling . . . there's a hopeful, optimistic, even contagious quality to this superb book

Los Angeles Times

The Author

REBECCA SOLNIT is the author of more than twenty books, including Orwell’s Roses, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, Recollections of My Non-Existence, which was longlisted for the 2021 Orwell Prize for Political Writing and shortlisted for the James Tait Black Award, The Faraway Nearby, Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, River of Shadows and A Paradise Built in Hell. She is also the author of Men Explain Things to Me and many essays on feminism, activism, social change, hope, and the climate crisis. She writes regularly for the Guardian, the London Review of Books and the Los Angeles Times. She lives in San Francisco.