Published: 06/09/2018
ISBN: 9781783784981
Granta Books
192 pages

Call Them by Their True Names

Rebecca Solnit

Beginning with the election of Donald Trump (“The Loneliest Man in the World”) and expanding back and forth into American history, surveillance, violence against the individual, the denormalizing of misogyny and the rehumanizing of public space. The ultimate focus of the book is climate and feminist activism, bringing Solnit’s trademark deep analysis to bear on a range of contemporary crises. And again, and spectacularly, she shows us how to hope.

Solnit's examination of our politics' inner life has allowed us to see the flows beneath the flotilla, the forest and the trees together at once. It has equipped us to make demands in accordance with the length and magnitude of the fights we have ahead. And it assures us that we are never, ever acting alone

Stephanie Sy-Quia, Review 31

Solnit should be read by anyone with an interest in where we find ourselves and what direction we could be headed... A clear brook of reasoning in the opinionated deluge of calumny that makes up many of our debates

NJ McGarrigle, Irish Times

'[A] vibrantly resisting work, that calls out euphemism ("climate change" should be "climate violence")

Book of the Year selected by Robert Macfarlane, Guardian

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.