Synopsis:

These provocative essays by National Book Critics Circle award-winner Solnit (author of Wanderlust, among other books), mostly published in magazines like the London Review of Booksand Sierraand in books by other authors over the past seven years, attempts to understand politics through place. Her meditations often begin with landscape, but for her, “to be in the woods is not to be out of society or politics.” She goes far beyond pristine nature, as she considers the mythology of the American West, ponders Silicon Valley—which she calls “a non-place”—and muses about antiglobalization protest sites in California and Miami. The impediments people use to keep strangers out of their gardens distress her, as do barriers that would seal the U.S. off from the rest of the world. She celebrates vibrant public spaces, laments malls and rails against the displacement of Asher Durand’s painting Kindred Spirits from New York City to Arkansas, by a Wal-Mart heiress whose fortune is built on a philosophy antithetical to that of the painting. Activists and idealists Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs and Betty Friedan, and the visionary architect Teddy Cruz give her hope. Always insightful, these essays offer many shrewd observations about the social, political and cultural landscape of contemporary America.

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Topics/Categories:

Essays, Social Issues

Type of Work:

Book

Publishers:

University of California Press

Purchase From:

Amazon

Original Publish Date:

June 18, 2007

Formats and associated ISBNs:

0520251091

Formats:

Hardcover

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