The proof of Rebecca Solnit's combined facility for cross-disciplinary explorations and exquisite prose lies in the 30 striking pieces in The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness, a wide-ranging collection of her work from 2006 to 2013. Solnit (The Faraway Nearby) leaves no doubts about her political perspective, which infuses many of these pieces: "I come from the left, and my task is clearly telling the other, overlooked histories of hope, popular power, subversion, and possibility." From that vantage point, she reserves some of her strongest scorn for "neoliberals," inveighing against their "tendency to create elite private solutions and let the public sphere go to hell." Proudly describing herself as a "public citizen" who mourns Americans' retreat from that arena, she's a fierce advocate for direct democracy and communitarianism.
Some of the strongest pieces in this collection focus on environmental issues. "Winged Mercury and the Golden Calf," an account of the depredations of the California Gold Rush, finds an unsettling echo in today's Marcellus Shale boom in the Northeast United States. In "Oil and Water," she rejects the benign term "spill," opting instead to refer to the "blowout" at BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that poured millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
In its best moments, Solnit's writing is every bit as strong as the work of Joan Didion and Annie Dillard, as when she seamlessly weaves Martha Stewart, James Joyce and the Odyssey into a meditation on shelter and materialism. Often startling and always original, this book showcases the work of an impressive intellect and a brilliant writer. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer