Savage Dreams

"It is. Though Solnit had written an exhibition catalogue or two before Savage Dreams, this is her first standalone creative nonfiction book. Solnit before she was ‘the’ Rebecca Solnit. Savage Dreams is wonderful, amazing; it’s everything we all love about her writing. It has the deep research, the unbelievably sharp thinking, the beautiful, beautiful prose. Part of what makes Solnit Solnit—and radically ecological—is the way that she links disparate things together. Except that Solnit does this great cultural, political, and intellectual history and finds that the two sites resonate with each other deeply: the culture that would create nuclear test sites is the same culture that would create Yosemite National Park. They’re two sides of the same coin. Solnit does this all in incredible, electric glowing prose—a model for the way that I want to write. Hers is a literary form that is not linear but weblike, ecological. Savage Dreams is, unfortunately, underread in the Solnit canon. I highly recommend it."