Hope in the Dark
The Untold History of People Power

Poet Olzhas Suleimenov is supposed to be reading poems live on Kazakh TV. Instead he suddenly departs from the script and calls for the shutdown of a local Soviet nuclear test site. Encouraged by this, 5,000 people gather at the Writers Union and start a movement. They link up with anti-test site activists in Nevada. The movement snowballs and the Kazakh site is eventually closed.

This is part of what lies at the heart of Rebecca Solnit’s philosophy: sometimes the most unlikely-seeming actions can set off positive chain reactions, even in the darkest times. And the tool to bring about change is: hope.

Tracing a history of activism and social change over the past five decades - including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Zapatista uprising in Mexico to Seattle in 1999,and the worldwide marches against the war in Iraq - Solnit proposes a vision of cause-and-effect relations that provides new grounds for political engagement.

Solnit's book is accessible and essential reading. Drawing from thinkers of the last century - including Woolf, Ghandi, Borges, Benjamin and Havel- she creates a manifesto for optimism for the twenty-first century and gives us all true reasons to never surrender.

"Conspiracy theorists and know-it-all pessimists get short shrift in this sparky, immensely readable book, rich in nuggets of vivid wisdom... Read it and connect - or reconnect - with what keeps us alive."
New Internationalist magazine, 5 stars

"...the ultimate 'feel-good' book for exhausted campaigners and activists who, while remaining convinced of the importance of their work, can't help occasionally asking themselves whether they really are making a difference... Rebecca Solnit's answer is a triumphant 'yes'." The Observer

"Radical, humane, witty, sometimes wonderfully dandyish, at other times, impassioned and serious." Alain de Botton

Format: Paperback
Pages: 181
Size: 130 mm x 200 mm