A PARADISE BUILT IN HELL: THE EXTRAORDINARY COMMUNITIES THAT ARISE IN DISASTER
Book ID/图书代码： 04940016B87739
English Summary/英文概要： "The freshest, deepest, most optimistic account of human nature I’ve come across in years."
-Bill McKibben
The most startling thing about disasters, according to award-winning author Rebecca Solnit, 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. A Paradise Built in Hell is an investigation of the moments of altruism, resourcefulness, and generosity that arise amid disaster’s grief and disruption and considers their implications for everyday life. It points to a new vision of what society could become-one that is less authoritarian and fearful, more collaborative and local.
Chinese Summary/中文概要： 在获奖作者Rebecca Solnit看来，关于灾难，最令人吃惊的事情不光是会有很多人挺身而出，而是这些人非常乐在其中。这喜悦揭示了一种平常很难得到满足的向往：有目的的、有意义的工作机会，这恰恰是灾难往往能够为我们带来的。本书研究了这样经常在灾难中出现的利他主义和慷慨行为，并考虑其对日常生活的影响。本书指向一个未来社会的可能性：更少专制，更少恐惧，更多合作，更本地化。(LYR)
Awards/获奖情况：根据本书的研究，自然和人为灾害可以成为展示人类团结的乌托邦，并为社会指出一条通向自由的道路。Solnit（著有《River of Shadows》）责备那些民防策划者、媒体和好莱坞导演危言耸听，坚持认为灾难将带来惊恐、抢劫、谋杀甚至吃人的悲剧，除非通过武力和政府控制的专业知识进行控制。调查1906年的旧金山大地震，或者911事件以及飓风灾难都能表明灾难的典型反应其实是自发的利他主义、自我组织和互助、与邻居和陌生人平静地进行抢救、互相给予食物和住房上的帮助。事实上，她认为在这种紧急情况下的主要问题其实是国民警卫队和精英官员自身的恐慌。本书淋漓尽致、言之有理，不仅令人信服而且非常及时，讨论了一群平凡人在一起或许可能超越最可怕的挑战。（Publishers Weekly，9月）
From Publishers Weekly
Natural and man-made disasters can be utopias that showcase human solidarity and point the way to a freer society, according this stimulating contrarian study. Solnit (River of Shadows) reproves civil defense planners, media alarmists and Hollywood directors who insist that disasters produce terrified mobs prone to looting, murder and cannibalism unless controlled by armed force and government expertise. Surveying disasters from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, she shows that the typical response to calamity is spontaneous altruism, self-organization and mutual aid, with neighbors and strangers calmly rescuing, feeding and housing each other. Indeed, the main problem in such emergencies, she contends, is the elite panic of officials who clamp down with National Guardsmen and stifling regulations. Solnit falters when she generalizes her populist brief into an anarchist critique of everyday society that lapses into fuzzy what-ifs and uplifting volunteer testimonials. Still, this vividly written, cogently argued book makes a compelling—and timely—case for the ability of ordinary people to collectively surmount the direst of challenges. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Interviews with Rebecca:
On WBUR (Boston’s National Public Radio station): "What Disasters Reveal About Humanity"
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/03/31/rebecca-solnit-hope-coronavirus
On CBC-Radio Canada
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-for-march-22-2020-1.5500395/in-disasters-most-people-are-altruistic-brave-communitarian-generous-says-rebecca-solnit-1.5500410
Recommended by:
“A Paradise Built in Hell is an eye-opening account of how much hope and solidarity emerges in the face of sudden disaster… These lessons will matter enormously in the months ahead as the pandemic gives way to the fight about what kind of society will be erected in its aftermath. But they also offer deep comfort now, as antidotes not just to feelings of helplessness but loneliness.”–David Wallace-Wells in New York Magazine
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-reading-list.html
Fodor’s Travel "Hang on to Hope in the World with These 11 Books"
https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/hang-on-to-hope-for-the-world-with-these-11-books
About the Author/作者介绍： Rebecca Solnit著有多部专著，包括《Hope in the Dark》、《River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West》等等，她的《As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art》获得了全美国家书评奖提名。2003年，她获得了久负盛名的Lannan文学奖。
Rebecca Solnit is the author of numerous books, including Hope in the Dark, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. In 2003, she received the prestigious Lannan Literary Award.
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Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE
Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE
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