From the climate crisis and the pandemic to trends in masculinity, a stellar collection of Rebecca Solnit's most recent thinking exploring the power of activism.

This book's title, No Straight Road Takes You There, is an evocation and a declaration. Highways tend to be built across the easy routes and flat places, or the landscape is cleared away - logged, graded, levelled, tunnelled through - but to stick to these roads is to miss what else is out there. In her writing and activism, Rebecca Solnit has sought the pathless places in order to celebrate indirect and unpredictable consequences, and to embrace slowness and imperfection, which, she argues, are key to understanding the possibilities of change.

In her latest essay collection, the award-winning writer explores responses to the climate crisis, as well as reflections on women's rights, the fight for democracy, the trends in masculinity, and the rise of the far right in the West. Incantatory and poetic, positive and engaging, these essays argue for the long-term view and the power of collective action, making a case for seeding change wherever possible, and offering us all a path out of the wilderness.

Details

ISBN13: 9781803511641
Format: Hardback
Number of Pages: 176
Edition:
Publication Date: 02 Sep 2025
Publisher: Granta Books
Publication City, Country: London,United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.8(H)x12.9(L)
Weight (gm):

Author Biography

REBECCA SOLNIT is the author of more than twenty books, including Orwell's Roses, Recollections of My Non-Existence, which was longlisted for the 2021 Orwell Prize for Political Writing and shortlisted for the 2021 James Tait Black Award, The Faraway Nearby, Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, River of Shadows and A Paradise Built in Hell. She is also the author of Men Explain Things to Me and many essays on feminism, activism, social change, hope, and the climate crisis. She lives in San Francisco and writes regularly for the Guardian. She lives in San Francisco.

Reviews

'A book of fierce and poetic thinking - and a guide for navigating a rapidly changing, non-linear, living world' - Merlin Sheldrake, author of Entangled Life
'With her deep sense of the movement of history, her agile intellect, hope in the possibilities of action and nimble prose, Solnit continues to surprise and delight. This new collection of essays is a tonic in dark times' - Lisa Appignanesi