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In 1851, a war began in what would become Yosemite National Park, a war against the indigenous inhabitants. A century laterin 1951and a hundred and fifty miles away, another war began when the U.S. government started setting off nuclear bombs at the Nevada Test Site. It was called a nuclear testing program, but functioned as a war against the land and people of the Great Basin. In this foundational book of landscape theory and environmental thinking, Rebecca Solnit explores our national Eden and Armageddon and offers a pathbreaking history of the west, focusing on the relationship between culture and its implementation as politics. In a new preface, she considers the continuities and changes of these invisible wars in the context of our current climate change crisis, and reveals how the long arm of these histories continue to inspire her writing and hope.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
New Preface
DUST, OR ERASING THE FUTURE: THE NEVADA TEST SITE
From Hell to Breakfast
Like Moths to a Candle
April Fool's Day
Trees
Lise Meitner's Walking Shoes
Golden Hours and Iron County
Ruby Valley and the Ranch
The War
Keeping Pace with the Tortoise
WATER, OR FORGETTING THE PAST: YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
The Rainbow
Spectators
Framing the View
Vanishing (Remaining)
Fire in the Garden
The Name of the Snake
Up the River of Mercy
Savage's Grave
Full Circle
Afterword
Sources
Index
About the author
Rebecca Solnit is the author of many books, including Storming the Gates of Paradise, Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, and Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas, all from UC Press.
Summary
"A beautiful, absorbing, tragic book."—Larry McMurtry
In 1851, a war began in what would become Yosemite National Park, a war against the indigenous inhabitants. A century later–in 1951–and a hundred and fifty miles away, another war began when the U.S. government started setting off nuclear bombs at the Nevada Test Site. It was called a nuclear testing program, but functioned as a war against the land and people of the Great Basin.
In this foundational book of landscape theory and environmental thinking, Rebecca Solnit explores our national Eden and Armageddon and offers a pathbreaking history of the west, focusing on the relationship between culture and its implementation as politics. In a new preface, she considers the continuities and changes of these invisible wars in the context of our current climate change crisis, and reveals how the long arm of these histories continue to inspire her writing and hope.
Additional text
"Solnit's book is an important contribution to the growing body of work on 20th-century activism. It is from such portrayals of the problems faced in past episodes of activism that we may broaden our own understanding of the risks––and promise––of our own collective actions."
Report
"Savage Dreams is about many things: despoliation and restoration, finding a voice between contemporary noise and silence, making friends and enemies. Most of all, though, it may be about a journey into history: about how understanding history and making it are not really very different." - Greil Marcus, author of Lipstick Traces
