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011b8368-fe47-46e7-a0e2-788a47fef530

Solnit, Rebecca

Solnit, Rebecca

A PARADISE BUILT IN HELL: THE EXTRAORDINARY COMMUNITIES THAT ARISE IN DISASTER

A PARADISE BUILT IN HELL: THE EXTRAORDINARY COMMUNITIES THAT ARISE IN DISASTER

New York

Viking

2009

FF: Non-fiction and biography

978-0-670-02107-9

Library owns 2 copies (copy 2 in storage in 166G) LCCN: 2009004101 Contents: Prelude: Falling Together I: A Millennial Good Fellowship: The San Francisco Earthquake The Mizpah Cafe Pauline Jacobson's Joy General Funston's Fear William James's Moral Equivalents Dorothy Day's Other Loves II: Halifax to Hollywood: The Great Debate A Tale of Two Princes: The Halifax Explosion and After From the Blitz and the Bomb to Vietnam Hobbes in Hollywood, or the Few Versus the Many III: Carnival and Revolution: Mexico City's Earthquake Power from Below Losing the Mandate of Heaven Standing on Top of Golden Hours IV: The City Transfigured: New York in Grief and Glory Mutual Aid in the Marketplace The Need to Help Nine Hundred and Eleven Questions V: New Orleans: Common Grounds and Killers What Difference Would it Make? Murderers Love and Lifeboats Beloved Community Epilogue: The Doorway in the Ruins

What most people believe and what actually happens in the aftermath of a disaster are two different things. The movies, the media, and the authorities have too often insisted that we are a chaotic, selfish species and ought to fear each other. Yet in the wake of almost every major disaster a wave of altruistic and brave improvisation saves lives, forms communities, and shapes many survivors experiences. The most startling thing about disasters, according to award-winning author Rebecca Solnit in her new book, A Paradise Built in Hell, 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. These spontaneous acts, emotions, and communities suggest that many of the utopian ideals of the past century are not only possible, but latent in everyday life. A disaster can be a moment when the forces that keep these ideals from flowering, those desires from being realized, fall away. Solnits book points to a new vision of what society could become one that is less authoritarian and fearful, more collaborative and local. A Paradise Built in Hell travels through five major North American disasters, from the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco and the 1917 explosion that tore up Halifax, Nova Scotia, to the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, New Yorks 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and reveals little-known but well-documented patterns of institutional failure, destructive beliefs, and extraordinary human achievement. In passing, the book also visits the London Blitz, Argentinas 2001 economic upheaval, Nicaraguas politically profound 1972 earthquake, other forms of social disruption from carnivals to revolutions and Hollywoods comically problematic take on disaster and heroism. Solnit has won acclaim for her ability to consistently locate unseen patterns and meanings in broad cultural histories, from her history of walking to her exploration of the world made by nineteenth-century technologies. This new book investigates the moments of joy, resourcefulness, and generosity that arise amid disasters grief and disruption and considers their implications for everyday life and for the coming era of increasingly common and intense calamity, natural, seminatural, and man-made.

150.S6.P3

Earthquake-Case Studies ; Explosion ; Historical Account ; Terrorism ; Hurricanes-Case Studies ; Floods-Case Studies ; Social Factors ; Disaster Response ; Disaster Recovery ;