Rebecca Solnit Popular Books
Rebecca Solnit Biography & Facts
Rebecca Solnit (born 1961) is an American writer. She has written on a variety of subjects, including feminism, the environment, politics, place, and art. Early life and education Solnit was born in 1961 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to a Jewish father and Irish Catholic mother. In 1966, her family moved to Novato, California, where she grew up. "I was a battered little kid. I grew up in a really violent house where everything feminine and female and my gender was hated," she has said of her childhood. She skipped high school altogether, enrolling in an alternative junior high in the public school system that took her through tenth grade, when she passed the General Educational Development tests. Thereafter she enrolled in junior college. When she was 17, she went to study in Paris. She returned to California to finish her college education at San Francisco State University. She then received a master's degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley in 1984 and has been an independent writer since 1988. Career Activism Solnit has worked on environmental and human rights campaigns since the 1980s, notably with the Western Shoshone Defense Project in the early 1990s, as described in her book Savage Dreams, and with antiwar activists throughout the Bush era. She has discussed her interest in climate change and the work of 350.org and the Sierra Club, and in women's rights, especially violence against women. Writing Her writing has appeared in numerous publications in print and online, including The Guardian newspaper and Harper's Magazine, where she is the first woman to regularly write the Easy Chair column founded in 1851. She was also a regular contributor to the political blog TomDispatch and is (as of 2018) a regular contributor to LitHub.Solnit is the author of seventeen books as well as essays in numerous museum catalogs and anthologies. Her 2009 book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster began as an essay called "The Uses of Disaster: Notes on Bad Weather and Good Government" published by Harper’s magazine the day that Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast. It was partially inspired by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which Solnit described as "a remarkable occasion...a moment when everyday life ground to a halt and people looked around and hunkered down". In a conversation with filmmaker Astra Taylor for BOMB magazine, Solnit summarized the radical theme of A Paradise Built in Hell: "What happens in disasters demonstrates everything an anarchist ever wanted to believe about the triumph of civil society and the failure of institutional authority."In 2014, Haymarket Books published Men Explain Things to Me, a collection of short essays on feminism, including one on the phenomenon of "mansplaining." Men Explain Things to Me has been translated into many languages, including Spanish, French, German, Polish, Portuguese, Finnish, Swedish, Italian, Slovak, Dutch, and Turkish. Solnit has been credited with paving the way for the coining of the word "mansplaining," which has been used to refer to instances in which men "explain" things generally to women in a condescending or patronizing way, but Solnit did not use the term in her original essay. Solnit's book included illustrations from visual and performance artist Ana Teresa Fernández. In 2019, Solnit rewrote a new version of Cinderella, also for Haymarket Books, called Cinderella Liberator. In this feminist revision, Solnit reclaims Ella from the cinders and gives both the prince ("Prince Nevermind" in her version) and Ella new futures that involve thinking for themselves, acting out free will, starting businesses, and becoming friends, rather than dependent lovers. As Syreeta McFadden argued for NBC News, Cinderella has long been retold, changing with the times. Solnit's book uses Arthur Rackham’s original silhouetted drawings of Cinderella. Reception Solnit has received two NEA fellowships for Literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital Award, a Lannan literary fellowship, and a 2004 Wired Rave Award for writing on the effects of technology on the arts and humanities. In 2010, Utne Reader magazine named Solnit as one of the "25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World". Her The Faraway Nearby (2013) was nominated for a National Book Award, and shortlisted for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award.New York Times book critic Dwight Garner called Solnit "the kind of rugged, off-road public intellectual America doesn't produce often enough. ... Solnit's writing, at its worst, can be dithering and self-serious, Joan Didion without the concision and laser-guided wit. At her best, however [...] she has a rare gift: the ability to turn the act of cognition, of arriving at a coherent point of view, into compelling moral drama."For River of Shadows, Solnit was honored with the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism and the 2004 Sally Hacker Prize from the Society for the History of Technology, which honors exceptional scholarship that reaches beyond the academy toward a broad audience. Solnit was also awarded Harvard's Mark Lynton History Prize in 2004 for River of Shadows. Solnit was awarded the 2015–16 Corlis Benefideo Award for Imaginative Cartography by the North American Cartographic Information Society Solnit's book, Call Them By Their True Names: American Crises, won the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. She won the 2019 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in Non-Fiction.Solnit credits Eduardo Galeano, Pablo Neruda, Ariel Dorfman, Elena Poniatowska, Gabriel García Márquez, Virginia Woolf, and Henry David Thoreau as writers who have influenced her work. Bibliography Books Secret Exhibition: Six California Artists of the Cold War Era. San Francisco: City Lights Bookstore. 1991. ISBN 9780872862548. Savage Dreams: A Journey Into the Landscape Wars of the American West. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2014 [1994]. ISBN 9780520957923. A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland. London: Verso. 2011 [1997]. ISBN 9781844677085. Wanderlust: A History of Walking. New York: Penguin. 2001 [2000]. ISBN 9780140286014. Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism. Images by Susan Schwartzenberg. London: Verso. 2002 [2000]. ISBN 9781859843635.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art. Athens: University of Georgia Press. 2003 [2001]. ISBN 9780820324937. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. New York: Viking. 2004 [2004]. ISBN 0142004103. Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (Updated ed.). Haymarket Books. 2016 [2004]. ISBN 9781608465767. A Field Guide to Getting Lost. New York: Viking. 2005. ISBN 9781101118719. Yosemite in Time: Ice Ages, Tree Clocks, Ghost Rivers. Photographs by Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe. San Antonio: Trinity University Press. 2005. ISBN 9781595340429.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: o.... Discover the Rebecca Solnit popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Rebecca Solnit books.
Best Seller Rebecca Solnit Books of 2024
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Shrill
Lindy WestShrill is an uproarious memoir, a feminist rallying cry in a world that thinks gender politics are tedious and that women, especially feminists, can't be funny. Coming of age in a ...
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Elsewhere
Rosita Boland'Utterly engaging.' Sunday TimesFrom her first lifechanging solo trip to Australia as a young graduate, Rosita Boland was enthralled by travel. In the last thirty years she has vi...
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Easy Beauty
Chloé Cooper JonesFinalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Memoir or AutobiographyA New York Times Notable Book of 2022 Vulture’s #1 Memoir of 2022 A Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA TODAY, Time,...
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Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf & Stella McNichol'One of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century' Michael CunninghamClarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those...
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The Parenthood Dilemma
Gina Rushton“Rushton's work is generous, thoughtful, and honest, taking care neither to romanticize nor to disparage the choice to become a parent.” Jenny Hamilton, Booklist (starred review)A ...
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Miracle Country
Kendra AtleeworkWINNER OF THE SIGURD F. OLSON NATURE WRITING AWARD“Blending family memoir and environmental history, Kendra Atleework conveys a fundamental truth: the places in which we live, live...
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Nature
Ralph EmersonOriginally published anonymously, Nature was the first modern essay to recommend the appreciation of the outdoors as an allencompassing positive force. Emerson’s writings were reco...
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Stay True
Hua HsuPULITZER PRIZE WINNER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art, by the New Y...
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On Trails
Robert MoorNew York Times Bestseller Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award Winner of the Saroyan International Prize for Writing Winner of the Pacific Northwest Book Award “The best o...
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Hollow City
Rebecca SolnitReporting from the front lines of gentrification in San Francisco, Rebecca Solnit and Susan Schwartzenberg sound a warning bell to all urban residents. Wealth is just as capable of...
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Life Will Be the Death of Me
Chelsea Handler#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “This will be one of your favorite books of all time. Through her intensely vulnerable, honest, and hilarious reflections, Chelsea shows us more ...
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Die Heldin der Geschichte
Heidi PitlorDie Ghostwriterin Allie bringt sich und ihren Sohn Cass gerade so durch. Von ihrem Idealismus in Bezug auf Mutterschaft und feministische Erziehung musste sie sich längst verabschi...
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River of Shadows
Rebecca SolnitA New York Times Notable BookWinner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, The Mark Lynton History Prize, and the Sally Hacker Prize for the History of Technology...
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Abermals Blau
Klaus BonnZur Bedeutsamkeit der Farbe Blau in der Literatur ist schon viel geschrieben worden. In dem vorliegenden Essay gilt das Interesse drei USamerikanischen Autorinnen, Rebecca Solnit, ...
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A History of Masculinity
Ivan Jablonka & Nathan Bracher'Exhilarating . . . a work of scholarship, but also inspiration. . . Go and read Jablonka and change the world' Christina Patterson, Sunday Times'An unexpected bestseller in Franc...
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Viking Economics
George LakeyLiberals worldwide invoke Scandinavia as a promised land of equality, while most conservatives fear it as a hotbed of libertythreatening socialism. But the left and right can usual...
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A Book of Migrations
Rebecca SolnitIn this acclaimed exploration of the culture of others, Rebecca Solnit travels through Ireland, the land of her longforgotten maternal ancestors. A Book of Migrations portrays in m...
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The Witches Are Coming
Lindy WestIn this wickedly funny cultural critique, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir and Hulu series Shrill exposes misogyny in the #MeToo era.This is a witch hunt. We're witche...
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A Paradise Built in Hell
Rebecca SolnitThe author of Men Explain Things to Me explores the moments of altruism and generosity that arise in the aftermath of disaster Why is it that in the aftermath of a disaster? whethe...
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Machiavelli for Women
Stacey Vanek SmithFrom the NPR host of The Indicator and correspondent for Planet Money comes an “accessible, funny, cleareyed, and practical” (Sarah Knight, New York Times bestselling author) guid...
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Wanderlust
Rebecca SolnitA passionate, thoughtprovoking exploration of walking as a political and cultural activity, from the author of Orwell's Roses Drawing together many historiesof anatomical evolution...
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A History of Scotland
Bruce Lenman & J.L. MackieA history that is equally entertaining and enlightening, illustrating all of the changes of power and intricacies that are necessary to understand the interrelation between England...
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A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Rebecca Solnit“An intriguing amalgam of personal memoir, philosophical speculation, natural lore, cultural history, and art criticism.” Los Angeles TimesFrom the awardwinning author of Orwell's ...
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Essays and Letters
Friedrich Hölderlin, Charlie Louth & Jeremy AdlerOne of Germany's greatest poets, Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (17701843) was also a prose writer of intense feeling, intelligence and perception. This new translation of se...
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No One Tells You This
Glynnis MacNicolFeatured in multiple “mustread” lists, No One Tells You This is “sharp, intimate…A funny, frank, and fearless memoir…and a refreshing view of the possibilitiesand pitfallspersonal ...
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A River Passes By Here
Caroline Eaton TraceyRUNNERUP OF THE 2020 BODLEY HEAD / FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE'Just before the COVID19 quarantine, I moved into my girlfriend's apartment, a renovated garage in a forgotten triangl...
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A Literary Review
Søren Kierkegaard & Alastair HannayWhile ostensibly commenting on the work of a contemporary novelist, Kierkegaard used this review as a critique of his society and age. The influence of this short piece has been fa...
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The Gifts of Reading
Robert MacfarlaneFrom the bestselling author of UNDERLAND, THE OLD WAYS and THE LOST WORDS an essay on the joy of reading, for anyone who has ever loved a bookEvery book is a kind of gift to its r...
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The Faraway Nearby
Rebecca SolnitA New York Times Notable BookFinalist for the National Book Critics Circle AwardA personal, lyrical narrative about storytelling and empathy, from the author of Orwell's Roses Apri...
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Travelling Light
Alastair SawdayA charming and beautifully written account of the pleasures of slow travel for readers of Patrick Leigh Fermor, Colin Thubron and Eric Newby.'Lawrence Sterne once suggested that w...
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Three Women
Lisa TaddeoSOON TO BE A SERIES ON STARZ STARRING SHAILENE WOODLEY BETTY GILPIN DeWANDA WISE GABRIELLE CREEVY with BLAIR UNDERWOOD “Staggeringly intimate...Groundbreaking.” Entertainment W...
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The Cockroach and I
Saranya SubramanianRUNNERUP OF THE 2020 BODLEY HEAD / FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE'It's an exhausting, futile battle, really. Every night, the same smug cockroach squeezes herself out of my bathroom d...
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Strong Female Lead
Arwa Mahdawi'Fascinating . . . the most incredible argument for why a female model of leadership might actually be the more powerful and sustainable one' Scarlett Curtis'A bold, rigorous and l...
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Well, This Is Exhausting
Sophia BenoitFrom Bustle columnist and Twitter sensation Sophia Benoit, this “charming and often laughoutloud funny” (Vogue) memoirinessays explores the ins and outs of modern womanhoodfrom fin...
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The Power Notebooks
Katie RoipheKatie Roiphe, culture writer and author of The Morning After, shares a “beautifully written” (The New York Times Book Review) “astute memoir [that] reverberates with rich prose, cr...
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Pretty Bitches
Lizzie Skurnick & Rebecca TraisterThese empowering essays from leading women writers examine the power of the gendered language that is used to diminish women and imagine a more liberated world.Words matter. They ...
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An Awakened Life
Christopher TitmussIn an awakened life, our hearts are open, steady and purposeful. Most people today have a greater income, as well as more goods and labour saving devices, than any other generatio...
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Traces Remain
Charles NichollIn these wonderfully stylish and eclectic essays, Charles Nicholl pursues the fugitive traces of the past with the skill and relish that have earned him a reputation as one of the ...
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Fathoms
Rebecca GiggsWinner of the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist for the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing ...