Rebecca Solnit

Hope in the Dark

Elena Kuran

A heartening but somewhat disjointed blend of academic/liberal Steven Pinker type optimism and Gramsci's optimism of the will.

Maggie Gordon

There are some incredible pull quotes from Hope in the Dark, but the book as a whole feels disjointed and superficial to me. It deals with an important issue (the hope we should have as activists), but I found that it skimmed over too much history, and I never really felt the hope that Solnit was trying so hard to cultivate. Perhaps this is partially because the book deals with an activism that feels disconnected to what I am familiar with today, only a few years later.