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Rebecca Solnit
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Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Hidden Wars of the American West 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

by Rebecca Solnit (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 40 ratings
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"A beautiful, absorbing, tragic book."—Larry McMurtry

In 1851, a war began in what would become Yosemite National Park, a war against the indigenous inhabitants. A century later–in 1951–and a hundred and fifty miles away, another war began when the U.S. government started setting off nuclear bombs at the Nevada Test Site. It was called a nuclear testing program, but functioned as a war against the land and people of the Great Basin.

In this foundational book of landscape theory and environmental thinking, Rebecca Solnit explores our national Eden and Armageddon and offers a pathbreaking history of the west, focusing on the relationship between culture and its implementation as politics. In a new preface, she considers the continuities and changes of these invisible wars in the context of our current climate change crisis, and reveals how the long arm of these histories continue to inspire her writing and hope.
Previous page
  1. ISBN-13
    978-0520282285
  2. Edition
    1st
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    University of California Press
  5. Publication date
    June 6, 2014
  6. Language
    English
  7. File size
    2568 KB
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Solnit's intelligent meditations may awaken us from our self-congratulatory coma. [Her] mid is fertile, wide-ranging, and capable of integrating the bewildering deluge of fact, political delusion, flights of genius, inconceivable danger, and cunning deceit that have characterized the nuclear age." ― Los Angeles Times

"Flinging her net wide, Solnit evokes powerful images of destruction and conquest as she explores governmental abuses in the region." ― Publishers Weekly

"Solnit's ability to see these issues from several sides-to see the nuclear blasts as beautiful as well as terrible, James Savage as not just a butcher but as a complex man-make this a complicated, engaging work." ― Environmental History Review

"“The product of a stunningly original and expansive imagination. Savage Dreams ties together the histories of Yosemite National Park and the Nevada Test Site. . . . to illuminate the political stakes of how we think about, and act upon, the landscape.” " ― SF Weekly

"Solnit's book is an important contribution to the growing body of work on 20th-century activism. It is from such portrayals of the problems faced in past episodes of activism that we may broaden our own understanding of the risks––and promise––of our own collective actions." ― Science & Society

From the Inside Flap

A beautiful, absorbing, tragic book. . . . Rebecca Solnit tells this story with the passion and clarity it deserves.--Larry McMurtry

"The product of a stunningly original and expansive imagination. Savage Dreams ties together the histories of Yosemite National Park and the Nevada Test Site... to illuminate the political stakes of how we think about, and act upon, the landscape." --SF Weekly

Savage Dreams summons us to the campfires of resistance.--Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz

Savage Dreams is about many things: despoliation and restoration, finding a voice between contemporary noise and silence, making friends and enemies. Most of all, though, it may be about a journey into history: about how understanding history and making it are not really very different.--Greil Marcus, author of Lipstick Traces

A wonderful and important book, weaving past and present, politics and spirituality, land and history, pleasure and outrage, esthetics and activism, into a map where we as Americans find ourselves today. Intellectually challenging but beautifully written and eminently readable, Savage Dreams has both heart and teeth. --Lucy Lippard, author of Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00K1MZMHI
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of California Press; 1st edition (June 6, 2014)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 6, 2014
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2568 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 442 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0520282280
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 40 ratings

About the author

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Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit

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Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of seventeen books about environment, landscape, community, art, politics, hope, and memory, including the updated and reissued Hope in the Dark, three atlases, of San Francisco in 2010, New Orleans in 2013, and New York forthcoming in October; 2014's Men Explain Things to Me; 2013's The Faraway Nearby; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Wanderlust: A History of Walking; and River of Shadows, Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at Harper's and frequent contributor to the Guardian newspaper.

She encourages you to shop at Indiebound, your local independent bookstore, Powells.com, Barnes & Noble online and kind of has some large problems with how Amazon operates these days. Though she's grateful if you're buying her books here or anywhere....

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
40 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

J. S. bartley
5.0 out of 5 stars Rebecca Solnit is a must read
Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2022
Verified Purchase
Solnit is one of my favorite authors and she’s made my favorite top ten list twice this year. The subtitle of this book is A Journey Into The Hidden Wars of the American West. It was written in 2014 and has been sitting on my shelf for a few years. At first, I thought it would be about the American cowboy and the wild west or about fighting Indians, but it was not. Solnit always addresses several issues in her books with great insight and beautiful writing.
One person found this helpful
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Ghost of Tenaya
4.0 out of 5 stars People should really learn Yosemite Native American history
Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2007
If people would really read the TRUE history of Yosemite Indians they would find something interesting. First the Miwoks in the area were friends and workers for James Savage and Charles Webber, the founder of Stockton. The Miwoks had a working relationship with both white men and they dug gold for them. The real Indians of Yosemite were Mono Paiutes who tried to fight off the invasion, and not Miwoks. They were allied with the white invaders and they called James Savage "White father". I am a descendent of the original Indians of Yosemite and there is a problem. The defintion "Some of them are killers" for Yosemite was fabricated in 1978 and is not the original meaning of Yosemite. The real meaning was "The Killers" or "The Grizzlies" because the Miwoks were afraid of the Ahwahnees. It was Chief Bautista and Russio, who were helping the Mariposa Battalion, who coined that term "Yosemite" for the Indians in Yosemite Valley which they were afraid to enter. It is because the Miwoks were once enemies of Chief Tenaya and the Ahwahnees. 30 years Yosemite National Park Service hired a person named Craig Bates who was married to a Miwok woman and had a 1/2 Miwok son who created that new defintion. So it is increble that ONE person changed the meaning and defintion of one of the most important and well known parks in the whold world...and no one noticed. The Miwoks were actually the scouts and guides for James Savage and the Mariposa Battalion, but you would not know it because the information was controlled by the "Indian expert" at Yosemite, which causes wrong information to be written...like the actual defintion of Yosemite. For the real story read Lafayette H. Bunnell's Discovery of the Yosemite to find out the truth.
13 people found this helpful
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Mauricio E Reyes
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2015
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Excellent book !!!
One person found this helpful
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Mary Sheeran
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written, honestly felt
Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2011
I read this book about ten years ago - found it at Yosemite - and loved how it knit together what for me had been a disturbing gap in the history they tell (and I think try to re-tell, at the park). My research into California Indians supports her understanding that the native would simply vanish into the wilderness, disappear. Except that they did not. Juxtaposing this history with that of the nuclear theme connects the history of a land in Nevada that is presumed lifeless, except that there has been so much life there for thousands of years. Unseen life. Invisible.

A second reading, which I just did, underlines the beautiful and clear descriptive prose.

It's a wonderful book. Judging from the reviews, it completely bewilders and scares those who are unfamiliar with the Christian faith and who think all this stuff is pagan. (The Christian church is the primary holder of the pagan traditions. But don't get me started...)
17 people found this helpful
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Robert McPhee
5.0 out of 5 stars Gave me a lot to think about...
Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2013
Reading a Rebecca Solnit book is like paling around for a day with an extremely intelligent, curious person. In this book, Solnit weaves her experiences with anti-nuclear protesters in Nevada with her attempt to uncover the real history of Yosemite Valley and Yosemite National Park, with emphasis on Yosemite's native American past. On the way she muses about the history of landscape viewing, the beauties of the Great Basin, how the national attitude toward the wilderness has changed over the years, and about a hundred other topics. This book was a pleasure to read and gave me much to think about.
10 people found this helpful
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Dante A Esparza
3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2014
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okay book
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Larry Darnell
5.0 out of 5 stars The Other Reviews Are Not About The Book
Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2007
Wow, take a moment to read the other reviews of this book.

I picked this book up off a bargain table, and months later happened to take it with me when I was visiting Yosemite without knowing 1/2 the book was about Yosemite. That was kind of a thrill.

Solnit's historical and writing skills, her ability to build a world stage of activity and its interconnectedness with her narrative are extraordinary.

As a landscape artist and photographer, I find this book to be a great resource. Understanding the history of Yosemite is frankly consciousness shifting.

As the other reviewer says, nuclear weapons are our oyster.

Indians, big bangs, Central Park, Fremont and the Heart of Darkness. How about that.
23 people found this helpful
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Randall L. Wilson
3.0 out of 5 stars Personal or Political? Neither worked for me
Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2013
Rebecca Solnit writes clear and thoughtful prose. She has a clear-eyed view on the often contradictory threads that flow through the American political experience. But "Savage Dreams" falls flat for me. She inserts herself mightily into this story of a America steam rolling over the rights of indigenous people and the willingness of our government to poison us with radiation to support larger national security goals.

We follow Rebecca on her journey to the Nevada Test Site, to the homes of Western Shoshones, to Yosemite National Park but we don't get inside her experience which keeps her away from us. I don't feel invested in what she is doing and I find the poetic, descriptive prose also distancing me from a tragic story that would benefit from more authorial heat.

The best part of the book was her discussion of how Yosemite in specific but the glorious landscapes of the West in general were viewed by white explorers. They say these places as virgin, untouched, static landscapes. Rebecca argues that this framing allowed the whites to brush aside the native whose homes were in Yosemite Valley and elsewhere. The myth presented to the larger public was the preservation of these empty landscapes as untouched paradise for future generations. This myth doesn't account for the native people who were often violently banished from their homelands but it allowed whites to hold onto their desires to have an untouched wilderness at their beck and call.
10 people found this helpful
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