A Paradise Built in Hell

The Extraordinary Communities and Strange Joys that Arise in Disasters

English language

Published July 9, 2009 by Viking.

ISBN:
978-0-670-02107-9
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OCLC Number:
303896716

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4 stars (11 reviews)

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.

3 editions

Review of 'A Paradise Built in Hell' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

Abandoned, p.90. Stories of disasters bringing out the best in us. Cherrypicked anecdotes demonstrating how wonderful and kumbaya it is when disasters happen and survivors organically unite to provide mutual assistance, rejecting payment, everyone acting out of pure unselfish love; then how horrible it is when authorities come in and ruin everything. This was reading more like a utopian manifesto than anything nuanced, informative, or thoughtful. I flipped ahead, got the same vibe, am moving on to my next book.

Review of 'A Paradise Built in Hell' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

In times of disaster institutions are overwhelmed, authorities vanish or are unable to keep up, society itself is spun ajumble, and people must rely on their wits and each other. What happens next?

Perhaps you’ve heard that with the thin fabric of civilization ripped suddenly away from us, we become bestial and savage in our civic nakedness: “nature, red in tooth and claw” reemerges, in some [b:Lord of the Flies|7624|Lord of the Flies|William Golding|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327869409s/7624.jpg|2766512] or Mad Max way, and, until we can bring ourselves back under the protection of our authorities and institutions…


In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain… no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
―[a:Thomas Hobbes|10122|Thomas Hobbes|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1267037419p2/10122.jpg], [b:Leviathan|91953|Leviathan|Thomas Hobbes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1326788684s/91953.jpg|680963]


Rebecca Solnit says …

Review of 'A paradise built in hell' on Goodreads

3 stars

Exploring human responses to a series of urban disasters through first-hand accounts and the research of disaster sociologists, Solnit weaves a story of human nature of neighborly help and camaraderie. Disaster planning by those in charge still largely assumes (as Solnit recounts in Hurricane Katrina's story most painfully) that the masses become beastly selfish mobs who must be controlled, and yet it seems instead it is the elite whose hierarchy is upturned by disaster who panic, and through whose often militarized or else distracted control of power who kill and destroy the self-support systems that arise out of love for your suddenly equal neighbor when the individual disasters of everyday life are replaced by a shared calamity.

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Subjects

  • Disasters -- Social aspects
  • Disasters -- Psychological aspects

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