Summary

Solnit opens her book with a quote from Virginia Woolf's journal in 1915 in which Woolf writes, "The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be, I think" (1). Solnit analyzes this quote and determines that what Woolf meant by "darkness" was an inability to see what would happen next, rather than a state of terrible despair. She expands this understanding of darkness and applies it to the current moment in 2004, asserting that having hope does not mean knowing exactly what is to come, but rather taking a risk and doing the necessary work to make what is possible for the world a reality.

In order to explain what hope can achieve in the world, Solnit begins by recapitulating some of the "losses" and "wins" of the last decade, focusing primarily on the Iraq War and the defeat...