The Beginning Comes After the End

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER

INDEPENDENT PRESS TOP 40 BESTSELLER

Rebecca Solnit offers a thrilling account of the sheer breadth and scale of social, political, scientific, and cultural change over the past three quarters of a century.

In this sequel to her enduring bestseller Hope in the Dark, Solnit surveys a world that has changed dramatically since the year 1960. Despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history, change is not a possibility; it is an inevitability.

The changes amount to nothing less than dismantling an old civilization and building a new one, whose newness is often the return of the old ways and wisdoms. In this rising worldview, interconnection is a core idea and value. But because the transformation is obscured within a longer arc of history, its scale is seldom recognized.

While the white nationalist and authoritarian backlash drives individualism and isolation, this new world embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, scientific breakthroughs, and Indigenous and non-Western ideas, pointing toward a more interconnected, relational world.

Product Details

Publisher Haymarket Books

Publish Date March 03, 2026

Pages 160

Language English

TypePaperback

EAN/UPC 9798888904510

Dimensions 7.4 X 5.1 X 0.8 inches | 0.4 pounds

BISAC Categories: Politics, Politics, Politics, Spirituality & Religion

Ebook

Product Details

Publisher Haymarket Books

Publish Date March 03, 2026

Pages 160

Language English

TypeEbook

EAN/UPC 9798888905272

About the Author

Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than 25 books, including Orwell's Roses, Hope in the Dark, Men Explain Things to Me, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. A longtime climate and human rights activist, she serves on the boards of Oil Change International and Third Act.