photo by Scott Sommerdorf

Rebecca Solnit is a writer, historian, and activist. Her books include As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art (2001), River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (2003), A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2006) and Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (2006). She is a columnist for Orion, and a regular contributor to the Nation Institute’s Tomdispatch daily newsgram. 

One Nation Under Elvis

Environmentalists might be a lot more effective if they listened to more country music —and especially if they listened more often to country music listeners.

Our Storied Future

Eschew dichotomies and embrace the confluences that make life worth living, and dying for.

The Limits of Landscape

Beyond the gallery and the picture frame, art is free to connect with everything else.

Finding Time

How will we get back what we've lost if we're too busy to notice it's gone missing?

Reasons Not to Glow

As the energy crisis heats up, you may need a refresher on the evidence against nukes.

The Thoreau Problem

Must beauty and pleasure wait until after the revolution?

The War Against Oblivion

When distant horrors fail to move us, we're in need of a serious reality check.

Some Monsters Die Slowly

As the average attention span grows ever shorter, we're apt to miss out on many happy endings.

More Perfect Unions

Real democracy, not representative or misrepresentative democracy, is much more possible on the smaller scale of a functioning community. And maybe only possible on that scale.

Winged Mercury and the Golden Calf

The mythology of gold didn't end with the ancient Greeks, and the popular version of this element's story in America leaves out a glittering nemesis.

Acts of Hope

A lot of activists expect that for every action there is an equal and opposite and punctual reaction, and regard the lack of one as failure. After all, activism is often a reaction...