Talks & Entertainment

In The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change—the sequel to Rebecca Solnit’s enduring bestseller, Hope in the Dark—the climate and human rights activist surveys the breadth and scale of the social, political, scientific, and cultural change that has happened since 1960. 

Despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history, change is inevitable. The changes amount to nothing less than dismantling an old civilization and building a new one, whose newness is often the return of the old ways and wisdoms. But, because the transformation is obscured within a longer arc of history, its scale is seldom recognized.

While the white nationalist and authoritarian backlash drives individualism and isolation, Solnit demonstrates how this new world embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, scientific breakthroughs, and Indigenous and non-Western ideas, pointing toward a more interconnected, relational world. 

Solnit is the author of more than 25 books, including Orwell’s Roses, Hope in the Dark, and Men Explain Things to Me. 

Solnit will be in conversation with Bina Venkataraman, an executive leader, journalist, science and innovation policy strategist, and the author of The Optimist’s Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age.