Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays)

Longlist, National Book Awards 2018 for Nonfiction

Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays), by Rebecca Solnit book cover
ISBN 9781608469468
Haymarket Books
Rebecca Solnit author photo, credit Adrian Mendoza
Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit is a writer, historian, and activist, and the author of over eighteen books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and disaster. More about this author >

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In this powerful and wide-ranging collection of essays, Solnit turns her attention to the war at home. This is a war, she says, “with so many casualties that we should call it by its true name, this war with so many dead by police, by violent ex-husbands and partners and lovers, by people pursuing power and profit at the point of a gun or just shooting first and figuring out who they hit later.” To get to the root of these American crises, she contends that “to acknowledge this state of war is to admit the need for peace,” countering the despair of our age with a dose of solidarity, creativity, and hope.

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