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=                      A_Paradise_Built_in_Hell                      =
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                            Introduction
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'A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in
Disaster' is a book by American writer Rebecca Solnit, published by
Viking Press in 2009. The book deals with the aftermath of disasters,
challenging the traditional narrative of chaos and mass panic with
evidence that people typically respond to disaster with altruism,
solidarity, and mutual aid.


                             Background
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Solnit lives in San Francisco, and 'A Paradise Built in Hell' was
inspired by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which she described as "a
remarkable occasion for a lot of us, a moment when everyday life
ground to a halt and people looked around and hunkered down". She
discussed the earthquake in a Raymond Williams Memorial Lecture she
delivered at the University of Cambridge in 2004, before developing
the lecture into an article for 'Harper's Magazine' titled "The Uses
of Disaster: Notes on Bad Weather and Good Government". The article
was published the same day Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New
Orleans.

This article led to the idea for 'A Paradise Built in Hell', which
Solnit characterized as presenting "a radically different view of
human nature and possibility" based on the premise that "what happens
in disasters demonstrates everything an anarchist ever wanted to
believe about the triumph of civil society and the failure of
institutional authority". The book was published in 2009 by Viking
Press.


                              Content
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In 'A Paradise Built in Hell', Solnit largely focuses on five
disasters and their social aftermath: the 1906 San Francisco
earthquake, the Halifax Explosion in 1917, the 1985 Mexico City
earthquake, the September 11 attacks, and the effects of Hurricane
Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. She includes various instances of
social action and altruism in response to these disasters, criticizing
Thomas Hobbes' notion of "the war of all against all" by providing
evidence that mutual aid and cooperation are a typical human response
to disasters and the breakdown of official authority. She additionally
draws on disaster sociology, recounting the story of Charles Fritz and
his conclusion that the typical response to disaster is not mass panic
but rather "an intimate, primarily group solidarity among the
survivors, which overcomes social isolation, provides a channel for
intimate communication and expression, and provides a major source of
physical and emotional support and reassurance".


                             Reception
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Jonathan D. Greenberg reviewed 'A Paradise Built in Hell' for the
'Stanford Social Innovation Review', where he described the book as
"brilliant". In 'Orion', a positive review by Ginger Strand stated
that while Strand "picked up 'Paradise' with trepidation born of
jingoistic overload ... Solnit is too keen a thinker to fall prey to
sentiment". Strand understood the examples in the book "not as a
stirring catalogue of good-doing but as a thoughtful assessment of
what the human response to disaster can tell us about our political
and social structures", and praised Solnit for her "compassion and
complexity".

Dwight Garner offered a positive review in 'The New York Times',
characterizing the book as "an investigation not of a thought but of
an emotion: the fleeting, purposeful joy that fills human beings in
the face of disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes and even terrorist
attacks". Garner criticized what he saw as Solnit's tendency toward
jargon but described the book as an achievement.


                           External links
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*
[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/books/excerpt-paradise-built-in-hell.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer
Excerpt published by 'The New York Times']


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