Rebecca Solnit

A powerful idea with a book that makes it's case exhaustively to make it inarguable.

The basic premise is that fundamentally, most people will help other people in a disaster, instead of turning on each other. She takes you through major disasters through history, including 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans, and it proves the point again and again. (And how in New Orleans, the apparent lawlessness was never as bad as it was pictured.)

Those times where things do actually go bad, it's usually because folks who are scared of losing power or privilege are responding out of fear and then creating a bad situation. (Gathering troops to protect businesses instead of helping rescue people from debris, for example. And when citizens are taking first aid supplies to help the wounded, they get shot.)

She makes the point that disasters create an opportunity for us to be better with each other, and that sometimes, that can persist past the disaster in question.

This book validated my overall optimism in human nature!

My only question, especially in some of the bigger disasters of today, such as COVID-19 and climate change... how can we capitalize on this same social good? The problem with these disasters is that there is too large a gap between the beginning of the problem and it's impact upon us, which makes it harder for us to come together against the problem the same way we would against a fire, an earthquake, or a flood...… (more)

Overall a great lense on Muybridge's life and work. Solnit focuses on how Muybridge helped change the way we exist in the world today, connecting him to the railroads, Sitting Bull, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and the state of California (among many many other things). Despite the complicated web of connections, for most of the book she exibits enough restraint to maintain the central narrative and keep it from becoming too unweildy. There's a sense that in the last chapter she gives up on that restraint (somehow connecting Star Trek's captain Sulu with the Modic Wars, for instance), but being at the end of the book there's a sense that she earned it. Overall it tells Muybridge's story in a unique, interesting, and sometimes surprising way.… (more)