I love her. You know all of those outlets that try to respond how all the news is bad by doing good news, but it’s always just the orphan crushing machine all over again?

Solnit is like an actually rigorous and deeply insightful version of what that thinks it is doing. I think she herself would push back on anyone who says she tries to figure out “human nature,” but insomuch as that’s a meaningful thing to do, that’s what she does. The book’s central aim is to investigate what human beings are actually like when existing social expectations and power structures are removed, and it’s both well-researched and surprisingly optimistic.