NO STRAIGHT ROAD TAKES YOU THERE

The hard work of making a better future.

Readers seeking reasons for hope in tumultuous times will find many in the latest from the author of Men Explain Things to Me. Solnit’s essays about climate change, toxic masculinity, income inequality, and other subjects are paeans to “patience, endurance, and long-term vision,” which she believes are essential to lasting political change. Solnit is a deft connector of historical dots. In one inspired essay, she demonstrates how 21st-century activists organized durable movements that moved centrist politicians toward progressive remedies on problems as varied as water usage and debt relief. Occupy Wall Street, launched in 2011, recognized that theirs would be a protracted fight, one that yielded tangible results in the 2020s, when politicians launched student loan forgiveness initiatives. More than two centuries ago, Solnit notes, John Adams detected a not dissimilar chain of events, writing that the American Revolution “was effected from 1760 to 1775.” Solnit describes climate change as “a moral crisis” and “a storytelling crisis.” Cynics may chuckle when she quotes a climate writer who says that “what we desperately need is more artists” to help create “a new world,” but Solnit offers a galvanizing vision for healing the planet, one that prizes community over material goods. A more humane definition of wealth, she writes, would foreground enriching relationships with nature and friends. This isn’t an autobiographical book, but the personal details Solnit shares suggest a very interesting person. She was “an antinuclear activist” and counts among her friends a death row inmate, a mushroom collector, and a violin maker. The latter appears in the book’s warmest essay, about the durability of a 300-year-old violin still played by a prominent musician. Fittingly, the instrument is “both a relic and a promise.”

A buoyant, historically astute appreciation of political persistence.