The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change

By Rebecca Solnit

Book Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER INDEPENDENT PRESS TOP 40 BESTSELLER Rebecca Solnit offers a compelling exploration of the extraordinary social, political, scientific, and cultural transformations that have reshaped our world over the past three quarters of a century.

In this sequel to her enduring bestseller Hope in the Dark, Solnit surveys a world that has changed dramatically since the year 1960. Despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history, change is not a possibility; it is an inevitability.

The changes amount to nothing less than dismantling an old civilization and building a new one, whose newness is often the return of the old ways and wisdoms. In this rising worldview, interconnection is a core idea and value. But because the transformation is obscured within a longer arc of history, its scale is seldom recognized.

While the white nationalist and authoritarian backlash drives individualism and isolation, this new world embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, scientific breakthroughs, and Indigenous and non-Western ideas, pointing toward a more interconnected, relational world.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0DTZRNPGM
• ISBN13: 9798888904510
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.1" x 7.4"