![]() ![]() By opening her book with two simple, existential questions rather than with a dramatic scene, Solnit lends gravitas to her subject matter. This imagery has been peddled by governments, Hollywood, and much news media to great, often tragic, effect. In the popular imagination, communities facing catastrophe involve panicked crowds, screaming, people trampling over one another as they flee or rush to seize dwindling resources like food or water. The prelude to A Paradise Built in Hell gives readers a road map, a sense of where Solnit is headed and the route she’ll travel to get there, an investigation into human behavior in different disasters. While they may sound philosophical, they serve practical ends: they immediately invite readers to regard themselves as not only individuals (“you”), but also part of a collective, the larger society (“we”). ![]() “In times of crisis,” she continues, “these are life-and-death questions.” As readers living in the midst of an ongoing emergency-the first pandemic in a century-these questions are deeply relevant. Who are you? Who are we?” So begins Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, which Alta Journal’s California Book Club will discuss on September 23 at 5 p.m. ![]()
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