"The freshest, deepest, most optimistic account of human nature I've come across in years." -Bill McKibben The most startling thing about disasters, according to award-winning author Rebecca Solnit, is not merely that so many people rise to the occasion, but that they do so with joy. That joy reveals an ordinarily unmet yearning for community, purposefulness, and meaningful work that disaster often provides. A Paradise Built in Hell is an investigation of the moments of altruism, resourcefulness, and generosity that arise amid disaster's grief and disruption and considers their implications for everyday life. It points to a new vision of what society could become-one that is less authoritarian and fearful, more collaborative and local.
Recommended on 3 episodes:
- π Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild
- π A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit
- π Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, Updated with a New Preface by Paul Farmer
- π The Division of Labor in Society by Emile Durkheim, Steven Lukes
- π Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit
- π Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky
- π This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein
- π A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit