Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Landscape Wars of the American West Book

I recently reread this book and was completely enraptured a second time. Rebecca Solnit has a beautiful and succinct voice, using language that is at once poetic (without being overly flowery) yet cuts to the heart of the matter of whatever she's writing about. Solnit is a magnificent researcher and is remarkably even-handed as well, providing SO much vital information and her p.o.v. while allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions on the history she lays before us. This book was particularly moving as it discusses the land wars in the West, the history of civil disobedience and environmental justice and its application in attempting to draw attention to the nuclear testing that's gone on in Nevada for DECADES largely without notice, and the development of Yosemite National Park. Now that I live in relative proximity to all these places I'm ever more fascinated (and upset) by their overlapping histories and able to visualize the historical and cultural forces that have played upon each other and lent their hands in forming what exists of the West today. Even more upsetting is the way in which histories are erased or disrupted upon the arrival of white people in the West. The book ends on a more positive note as the history of this region is not over, it's still happening, being formed. I suppose in elucidating all the various histories available in the Nevada nuclear testing areas and the National Park area Rebecca Solnit allows that it is up to us, agents in our own destinies and as history-makers, how to continue our lives in a way that dignifies the land, those who have come before us, and those who will inherit this place after us.