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A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster Kindle Edition

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 511 ratings

The 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? whether manmade or natural?people suddenly become altruistic, resourceful, and brave? What makes the newfound communities and purpose many find in the ruins and crises after disaster so joyous? And what does this joy reveal about ordinarily unmet social desires and possibilities?

In
A Paradise Built in Hell, award-winning author Rebecca Solnit explores these phenomena, looking at major calamities from the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco through the 1917 explosion that tore up Halifax, Nova Scotia, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. She examines how disaster throws people into a temporary utopia of changed states of mind and social possibilities, as well as looking at the cost of the widespread myths and rarer real cases of social deterioration during crisis. This is a timely and important book from an acclaimed author whose work consistently locates unseen patterns and meanings in broad cultural histories.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Natural and man-made disasters can be utopias that showcase human solidarity and point the way to a freer society, according this stimulating contrarian study. Solnit (River of Shadows) reproves civil defense planners, media alarmists and Hollywood directors who insist that disasters produce terrified mobs prone to looting, murder and cannibalism unless controlled by armed force and government expertise. Surveying disasters from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, she shows that the typical response to calamity is spontaneous altruism, self-organization and mutual aid, with neighbors and strangers calmly rescuing, feeding and housing each other. Indeed, the main problem in such emergencies, she contends, is the elite panic of officials who clamp down with National Guardsmen and stifling regulations. Solnit falters when she generalizes her populist brief into an anarchist critique of everyday society that lapses into fuzzy what-ifs and uplifting volunteer testimonials. Still, this vividly written, cogently argued book makes a compelling—and timely—case for the ability of ordinary people to collectively surmount the direst of challenges. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Praise for A Paradise Built in Hell:

“Everyone feels alone in a crisis . . . It needn’t be that way. In fact, as the incomparable Rebecca Solnit has shown throughout her long, meandering, brilliant career, but especially in [this book], it must not be. 
A Paradise Built in Hell is an eye-opening account of how much hope and solidarity emerges in the face of sudden disaster . . . [These lessons] offer deep comfort now, as antidotes not just to feelings of helplessness but loneliness.”
—David Wallace-Wells, New York Magazine 

“What will it be like to live not on the relatively stable planet that civilization has known throughout the ten thousand years of the Holocene, but on the amped-up and careening planet we’re quickly creating? With her remarkable and singular book, A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit has thought harder about the answer to that question than anyone else. Her answer is strangely and powerfully hopeful.  As she proves with inspired historiography, disasters often produce remarkable temporary communities—paradises of a sort amid the rubble, where people, acting on their own and without direction from the authorities, manage to provide for each other.”
—Bill McKibben, The New York Review of Books

“Thought-provoking . . . captivating and compelling . . . there's a hopeful, optimistic, even contagious quality to this superb book.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Far-reaching and large-spirited.”
—San Francisco Chronicle  

“Stirring . . . fascinating . . . presents a withering critique of modern capitalist society by examining five catastrophes . . . Her account of these events are so stirring that her book is worth reading for its storytelling alone. . . . [An] exciting and important contribution to our understanding of ourselves.”
—The Washington Post  

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003XQEVLM
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; Reprint edition (August 31, 2010)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 31, 2010
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2.2 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 354 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 511 ratings

About the author

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Rebecca Solnit
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Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of seventeen books about environment, landscape, community, art, politics, hope, and memory, including the updated and reissued Hope in the Dark, three atlases, of San Francisco in 2010, New Orleans in 2013, and New York forthcoming in October; 2014's Men Explain Things to Me; 2013's The Faraway Nearby; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Wanderlust: A History of Walking; and River of Shadows, Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at Harper's and frequent contributor to the Guardian newspaper.

She encourages you to shop at Indiebound, your local independent bookstore, Powells.com, Barnes & Noble online and kind of has some large problems with how Amazon operates these days. Though she's grateful if you're buying her books here or anywhere....

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
511 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book insightful and inspiring. They appreciate how communities band together and support the common good during times of crisis. However, opinions differ on the writing quality, pacing, and research. Some find the writing beautiful and inspiring, while others criticize poor research and writing.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

44 customers mention "Thought provoking"37 positive7 negative

Customers find the book thought-provoking and inspiring. They appreciate the original thesis and insightful narrative of disasters. The accounts are incredible and the book holds their attention. Readers say it dispels myths about how disaster brings out the worst in people.

"...It is absolutely worth reading past the dreary fantasy-based leftist anarchism to get all this juicy science-based sociology and psychology in one..." Read more

"...This would be an excellent book for people interested in leadership, disaster sociology, and the effects of media." Read more

"...Earthquake and the explosion of munitions in Halifax -- healthy, heroic parallels that are moving to read...." Read more

"...It was heartwarming and inspiring to read about all the normal individuals who stepped up to help their neighbor after disaster struck...." Read more

6 customers mention "Community involvement"6 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the community's involvement. They say they band together and act as a community, in an altruistic way. The book supports volunteer community-driven work and the common good. It also recognizes the universal desire to assist in times of crisis and the need to identify and identify those who need help.

"...how, in most disasters, survivors tend to band together and act as a community, in an altrustic way, almost a utopia...." Read more

"...a great telling of how during times of crisis, communities band together to help one another...." Read more

"...that the people who are on-site and affected pull together and work as a community and bond over the disaster...." Read more

"...Hope is offered here for acknowledging the universal desire to assist in times of crisis and the need to identify and name this so that these..." Read more

13 customers mention "Writing quality"4 positive9 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the writing quality of the book. Some find the messages inspiring and creative, while others mention poor research, repetitive viewpoints, and jarring syntax. The printing errors and blurry text also deter some readers from reading the book.

"...The writing and viewpoints can be repetitive and meandering. The section on the Mexico City earthquake doesn't fit in well with the other disasters...." Read more

"...The writing is choppy at best, jumping from historical events, to the author's personal habits, to bio-sketches of people allegedly shaped by..." Read more

"...Flowery language for a non-fiction book could have been nice, but instead I came to resent it as overly precious since the "facts" in the book were..." Read more

"...The narrator reads the words without understanding, so the syntax is jarring and actually deters me from listening. It's a shame." Read more

10 customers mention "Pacing"3 positive7 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the book's pacing. Some find it praiseworthy for showing how people rise up during crises and support the common good. Others feel the conclusions are unreliable, drawn from comparing unequal events, and glossed over challenging evidence. They mention poor research and writing, and feeling disappointed by the subjective and questionable data sources.

"...Some of the prose is repetitive, and sometimes it strays from the point...." Read more

"...She makes the contrarian point that masses of people actually behave quite well, with courage and altruism when disasters hit, but often times..." Read more

"...As it is, I was thoroughly disappointed. I'll be selling this one to the used book store in near original condition, if you want to save your money...." Read more

"...and helpful - are too important to have been buried with poor research and even poorer writing...." Read more

Disaster Sociology
5 out of 5 stars
Disaster Sociology
Solnit, R. (2009). A paradise built in hell: The extraordinary communities that arise in disasters. Viking.Rebecca Solnit is a writer, historian, activist and author of more than twenty books.Through researching disaster including the San Francisco 1906 earthquake, the Halifax explosion of 1917, the Mexico City earthquake, New York City 09/11, and the New Orleans Hurricane Katrina, Solnit explores that seemingly temporary sense of solidarity, empathy, charity, and generosity. She described how a prevailing misconception is that when a disaster occurs, "people [become] so overwhelmed by fear and selfish desire to survive that their judgment, their social bonds, event their humanity are overwhelmed." In reality, this isn't true, instead, people experience a sense of purposefulness, interconnectedness, and a commitment to serve their fellow citizens. As though there is a short window of time, when everything is stripped away, people tend to prioritize one another while experiencing a sense of solidarity. From disaster sociology, we learn how grassroot responses serve to activate what was described as "elite panic." Disaster sociologist Kathleen Tierney observed how "elites fear disruption of the social order" which challenges their legitimacy. "Elite panic" is amplified due to elites' "fear of social disorder, fear of poor, minorities and immigrants; obsession with looting and property crime; and willingness to resort to deadly force." Media further amplifies elite fears by perpetuating disaster myths around lawlessness and the need for strict social control. In highlighting how human behavior is different than expected, different than portrayed in disaster narratives, Solnit shares a glimpse of hope. We humans have an enormous capacity for love, care, and support of one another.This would be an excellent book for people interested in leadership, disaster sociology, and the effects of media.
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2009
    Before I picked up this book, I didn't even know that there was an academic field called "disaster sociology." It turns out it goes back to William James himself, an eyewitness to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake who had the open-mindedness to look at how the people of San Francisco were affected by that disaster without projecting his own prejudices on it. He was astonished; people in disasters don't act anything like how we would expect them to. James' findings have been replicated by studying people in hundreds of historical and modern disasters, and from those studies disaster sociologists have come to some concrete, reliable scientific findings. Solnit believes very, very much that the rest of us need to know what the disaster sociologists know, because our mistaken expectations of what will happen during and immediately after disasters keep making things worse, not better, for the survivors. Before James Lee Witt took over FEMA, and ever since he left, it's been a standing joke that all disasters come in two phases: the disaster itself, and then the even worse disaster when FEMA arrives. This is not a coincidence; Witt knows things about disaster that almost nobody else in America knows, including other first responders, and it showed up in his priorities.

    Solnit draws most of her examples from four disasters and their aftermaths, each recounted in detail: the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the 1917 explosion of an ammunition ship in Halifax harbor that destroyed the city, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, and the World Trade Center attack on 9/11 of 2001. Other earthquakes, hurricanes, bombings, and other disasters are cited for comparison and contrast. And here's what she reports, based on extensive research by multiple scientists into the actual first-hand accounts of people who lived through disasters:

    During a disaster, heroism is not particularly rare. Before a disaster, most people predict that they will panic, will react selfishly, will be cowards. It turns out not to be true. Most people don't run away from a disaster, they run towards it to see if they can help. Most people don't trample others to get away, they stop to pick each other up and help each other along. We keep being surprised by the fact that in an actual disaster, we are nearly all better people than we are in our daily lives. Disasters bring out the best in almost all of us. This is the book's single most important finding. It is extensively documented, and that's important, because most people will find it to be the most surprising.

    Disaster survivors do not panic. Actual examples of people succumbing to helplessness and going catatonic, or of rushing around destructively in panic, are seldom if ever found. When people self-evacuate, they almost 100% consistently do so calmly, in an orderly fashion, and spontaneously cooperate, even at their own risk, to carry out the wounded and the disabled. Crowds of people have trampled to death the injured and the fallen in the past -- but not in disasters. And once evacuated, rather than succumbing to grief and shock, the overwhelming majority of them move purposefully about, driven by the overwhelming urge to find something useful to do. More of them do find something useful to do, within the first half a day or so, than you would imagine. Those who find something useful to do, however briefly or however little it is, consistently report feeling overcome by joy, not panic or fear or depression or any other madness.

    Disaster survivors generally do not rape, loot, murder, or rob. Crime rates go down during disasters, not up. There are almost no documented examples, anywhere in human history, of people taking advantage of a disaster as an opportunity to commit crimes. Two specific examples of things that are called looting have been reported. First, if people need things from inside a home or a store to survive the first several days of a disaster and there is no one there to sell it to them or share it with them, they do take those things; but actual eyewitness accounts of disasters reveal that they are more likely to overpay, to leave money on the counter to cover what they took, than they are to steal. And secondly, there are accounts of people going into buildings that were about to be destroyed by fire or flood to take valuables out. Does it really count as stealing if someone takes a case of expensive cigars from a cigar store that is about to burn to the ground, or takes a flat screen TV out of a building that's about to go under water? Technically, yes, but that's the only extent there is of any documented "looting" in disasters.

    Rich people, politicians, and soldiers, on the other hand, consistently do panic, loot, and murder, specifically out of fear that poor people will. This happens so consistently that disaster sociologists have a term for it, "elite panic." Because they fear that temporarily ungoverned people will rape, murder, loot, and rob they send in soldiers under orders to shoot to kill, and shoot to kill they do. Having been instructed to think of the survivors of the disaster as little better than animals, many soldiers abuse the survivors on little or no provocation. In particular, the US Army's reaction to disasters, foreign and domestic, turns out to be execrable, by contrast to the US Coast Guard, the only military unit reported on in the whole book that never succumbs to elite panic, no matter how much political pressure they are put under to do so. Why not? Because disasters are a big part of what the Coast Guard does for a living, which means that the Coast Guard's experienced officers are just about the only "elites" we have who have enough first-hand experience with disaster survivors to know, first hand, what the disaster sociologists had to find out through scientific research.

    Even when they don't panic, "leaders" are mostly useless in a crisis. Each disaster is unique. In the first several days after a disaster, society's leaders, governors, rulers, and experts don't know who lived and who died. Among the living, they have no idea who has what skills that can be used. They don't know what resources are still available inside the disaster zone and they don't know which resources inside the zone were destroyed. They don't know what infrastructure still works and what infrastructure has failed. From roughly the 2nd hour of the disaster until at least the third day, maybe later, the only people who know these things are the disaster survivors themselves, and that's why during those first three days, ad hoc gatherings of random survivors do a better job of organizing relief kitchens, digging sanitary latrines, distributing any supplies that are available, and improvising temporary shelter than any top-down disaster response community can be.

    If elite panic focuses on a single ethnic group, the result can be particularly disastrous slaughter. It doesn't have to be. San Franciscans stood up for the ethnic Chinese in 1906, and there was no slaughter. But Ray Nagin, in particular, gets singled out for the most personalized and individual hatred by Solnit; his palapable and vocal fear that his fellow black New Orleaners would descend into savagery, and his constant acceptance of and passing along of every rumor to that effect that he heard, resulted in the mobilization of multiple white racist militias who killed harmless black people who were just trying to evacuate or survive, who posed no threat to anyone, and so far the killers have gone unpunished; a similar disaster befell the Korean-ancestry residents of one Japanese city after their earthquake, when that city's local mayor, like Nagin, whipped up fear of and hatred towards them.

    For many of society's outcasts and downtrodden, the disaster is not the worst day of their lives, it's the best. For the first 72 hours or so of a disaster, you don't have to worry about losing your job. You don't have to worry about whether or not you have any money. You don't have to worry about what you're going to do with the rest of your life. And a lot of people who've lived on the fringes of society, whether fringe religious groups or outcast Vietnam veterans or the homeless, are people who've accumulated the hard way an awful lot of the skills needed to cope with the sudden loss of everything. For example, after 9/11 one of the most important and popular places for mourners to gather was organized by a handful of rave promoters, assisted by a nearby Buddhist temple, and managed by a dozen or so local homeless guys who used to live in nearby alleys; in hurricane stricken southern Mississippi, one of the most important relief kitchens and disaster response centers was co-organized by a group of Christian missionaries and a group of Rainbow Family volunteers who happened to get there at about the same time. What all of those people felt was tremendous gratitude that someone finally needed the skills they happened to have.

    Those are just the findings that jumped out at me the hardest, after a single reading, and Solnit is absolutely right that everybody in the world needs to hear these things, needs to know these things, needs to respond to disaster based on how people actually act, not how we're afraid they're going to act. This is a very, very important book ...

    ... even though, frankly, it keeps getting tiresome. It took me a long time to read this book, because of one tooth-grindingly awful flaw, and that's Solnit's personal politics. Solnit chooses to read these findings, about how people react in the first 72 hours after a city-wide disaster, as "proof" of her anarcho-communist politics, proof that what we ought to be doing is finding some way to eliminate government, eliminate money, eliminate private property, so we can all self-organize our daily ordinary lives with the joy, purpose, and improvisational brilliance that disaster survivors consistently show. I remain unconvinced, and probably so will you, which makes it increasingly wearying when, every 3 or 4 chapters, she stops talking about disasters and starts talking about some future utopia or about how we should be living our daily lives according to her. My advice is to do what I did, do what you do when anybody with an equally weak grasp on reality starts ranting about politics: smile and nod, and move along. Skim the political rants about the wonders of anarcho-communism until you get back to the meat of the book, the actual useful disaster sociology. It is absolutely worth reading past the dreary fantasy-based leftist anarchism to get all this juicy science-based sociology and psychology in one very readable place. If you aren't already susceptible to anarcho-communist utopian arguments, they're not going to infect you against your will like some disease, but the rest of the book will infect you with something you do need: the realization that in any disaster, with the exception of a handful of us who have clawed their way to the top, the rest of us are all, pretty nearly without exception, better, kinder, and more useful people than we would ever have imagined in advance.
    91 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2023
    Solnit, R. (2009). A paradise built in hell: The extraordinary communities that arise in disasters. Viking.

    Rebecca Solnit is a writer, historian, activist and author of more than twenty books.

    Through researching disaster including the San Francisco 1906 earthquake, the Halifax explosion of 1917, the Mexico City earthquake, New York City 09/11, and the New Orleans Hurricane Katrina, Solnit explores that seemingly temporary sense of solidarity, empathy, charity, and generosity. She described how a prevailing misconception is that when a disaster occurs, "people [become] so overwhelmed by fear and selfish desire to survive that their judgment, their social bonds, event their humanity are overwhelmed." In reality, this isn't true, instead, people experience a sense of purposefulness, interconnectedness, and a commitment to serve their fellow citizens. As though there is a short window of time, when everything is stripped away, people tend to prioritize one another while experiencing a sense of solidarity. From disaster sociology, we learn how grassroot responses serve to activate what was described as "elite panic." Disaster sociologist Kathleen Tierney observed how "elites fear disruption of the social order" which challenges their legitimacy. "Elite panic" is amplified due to elites' "fear of social disorder, fear of poor, minorities and immigrants; obsession with looting and property crime; and willingness to resort to deadly force." Media further amplifies elite fears by perpetuating disaster myths around lawlessness and the need for strict social control. In highlighting how human behavior is different than expected, different than portrayed in disaster narratives, Solnit shares a glimpse of hope. We humans have an enormous capacity for love, care, and support of one another.

    This would be an excellent book for people interested in leadership, disaster sociology, and the effects of media.
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    5.0 out of 5 stars
    Disaster Sociology

    Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2023
    Solnit, R. (2009). A paradise built in hell: The extraordinary communities that arise in disasters. Viking.

    Rebecca Solnit is a writer, historian, activist and author of more than twenty books.

    Through researching disaster including the San Francisco 1906 earthquake, the Halifax explosion of 1917, the Mexico City earthquake, New York City 09/11, and the New Orleans Hurricane Katrina, Solnit explores that seemingly temporary sense of solidarity, empathy, charity, and generosity. She described how a prevailing misconception is that when a disaster occurs, "people [become] so overwhelmed by fear and selfish desire to survive that their judgment, their social bonds, event their humanity are overwhelmed." In reality, this isn't true, instead, people experience a sense of purposefulness, interconnectedness, and a commitment to serve their fellow citizens. As though there is a short window of time, when everything is stripped away, people tend to prioritize one another while experiencing a sense of solidarity. From disaster sociology, we learn how grassroot responses serve to activate what was described as "elite panic." Disaster sociologist Kathleen Tierney observed how "elites fear disruption of the social order" which challenges their legitimacy. "Elite panic" is amplified due to elites' "fear of social disorder, fear of poor, minorities and immigrants; obsession with looting and property crime; and willingness to resort to deadly force." Media further amplifies elite fears by perpetuating disaster myths around lawlessness and the need for strict social control. In highlighting how human behavior is different than expected, different than portrayed in disaster narratives, Solnit shares a glimpse of hope. We humans have an enormous capacity for love, care, and support of one another.

    This would be an excellent book for people interested in leadership, disaster sociology, and the effects of media.
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    2 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2020
    Highly recommended if you are not intimately familiar with the disasters covered in this book. I learned a lot about the 1906 earthquake/fires in San Francisco, massive 1917 explosion in Halifax, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. Worth reading for those history lessons alone. Beyond that I definitely see why this book was recommended to me. Exploring the narrative around disasters vs the truth is a fascinating topic. That is true even if you don't agree with Solnit's conclusions or viewpoints. You've likely already seen the other sides of Katrina and 9/11 in the news. This book will help build a holistic view of those events and drive a skeptical view of future disaster coverage.

    There are lots of small issues that combine to drive the missing star. The writing and viewpoints can be repetitive and meandering. The section on the Mexico City earthquake doesn't fit in well with the other disasters. Bringing more international disasters would have strengthened the book and eliminated lingering doubts about why they were excluded.

    I really wish she had made the connection between disasters and war to create a more holistic view of the human nature shown in the book's examples. Many soldiers coming back from deployments have the same stories to tell with smiling faces and fondness about the meaning and connections they miss despite the horrific conditions they were in.

    Given the current political climate I also wish she would have examined the different political responses to 9/11 and Katrina. She does not gloss over Democratic failings, but she also does not cover them as comprehensively or in the same way as Republicans. Non-partisan political reckonings are desperately needed today. If the Republican failings are truly more damning let the facts speak for themselves.
    6 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Ofernandez
    5.0 out of 5 stars From my experience at 1985 Mexico’s earthquake
    Reviewed in Mexico on September 17, 2021
    Nothing can resemble me more than this reading the exact same feeling and description where if “private life matters “ you don’t give a damn for it when you gather the collectively spirit of people struggling under destruction and debris and you need to turn into action no matter what . No time to analyze nor to cry or complain but to act and people became one not even social position nor wealthiness but to help and aid the needed .
    After disaster a new culture and social behavior arises and life goes on where “Joy too matters “
    Delighted to read Rebecca Solnit and ready to follow her through other books titles ,,
  • David
    5.0 out of 5 stars Opinion changing well written book
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 7, 2022
    Challenged media view of panicking masses and gave measured optimism in ordinary people. In the light of covid it explains how we got on and supported each other. Worth reading and to learn to trust our neighbours
  • PHM69
    5.0 out of 5 stars Everyone needs to read this
    Reviewed in Canada on August 22, 2015
    This is a game-changing book. Everyone ought to read it.
    Solnit documents, in clear and engaging style, the myth of panic among people in the midst of tragedies such as the California earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, etc. If there is any panic, it's among the privileged administrative class, who see in everyday people's cooperation a threat to the established order and the personal domination of the privileged.
    Read it; you won't be disappointed.
  • M. Koehne
    5.0 out of 5 stars sehr bereichernd
    Reviewed in Germany on July 23, 2013
    Um den Inhalt kurz zusammenzufassen: Es geht um die spontante Entwicklung von ("Behelfs-") Zivilgesellschaften nach Katastrophenereignissen, die Menschlichkeit und den Altruismus, die gerade dann wieder zu Tage treten und die (oftmals unrühmliche) Reaktion des Staates darauf, der natürlich bemüht ist alles wieder unter seine Kontrolle zu bringen.

    Ein Buch, das eigentlich in der Schule gelesen werden sollte. Aber dafür ist es wohl zu anarchistisch angehaucht, da die staatlichen Autoritäten nicht unbedingt in das beste Licht gerückt werden. Allerdings ist die Autorin dabei in keinster Weise polemisch oder reißerisch, sondern schildert einfach gewisse Abläufe. Diese zu bewerten bleibt natürlich jedem selbst überlassen.

    Ansonsten schafft es dieses Buch tatsächlich, einem ein Stück weit den Glauben an die Menschheit zurückzugeben (so er denn vorher beschädigt war, optimistische Menschenfreunde wird das Buch eher in ihrer Weltanschauung bestätigen).

    Das Buch ist größtenteils sehr kurzweilig und spannend geschrieben, was bei einem Sachbuch (wo ich es am ehesten einordnen würde) ja nicht unbedingt selbstverständlich ist. Da die Autorin sich einer klaren Sprache bedient und nicht ins poetische abschweift ist es auch recht leicht zu lesen, sofern man gewisse Englischkenntnisse hat. Aber wer die nicht hat, kommt wahrscheinlich sowieso nicht auf die Idee, sich hier über das Buch zu informieren.

    Es bleibt zu hoffen, daß sich irgendwann ein Übersetzer für dieses Buch findet, um es einer breiteren Masse zugänglich zu machen. Ganz klare Lese- und Kaufempfehlung.
  • Joseph Myren
    5.0 out of 5 stars AWESOME
    Reviewed in Canada on June 30, 2022
    AWESOME

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