Summary

In “Mutual Aid and the Marketplace,” Solnit makes the case that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 could have been even more lethal had people not come to the aid of each other. Immediately, New Yorkers created “concentric circles of support” (185) around the disaster scene and began to feed and care for each other. It is hard to imagine what would have happened if the tower evacuations had been more frenzied: “About twenty-five thousand people in the towers aided each other in an orderly evacuation without which the casualties would have been far higher than the 2,603 that resulted” (184). The desire to help was immediate, and volunteers from all over the world converged upon New York City.

In “The Need to Help,” Solnit describes volunteers who organized themselves and gave away everything from water bottles to...