Third Act Advisor Rebecca Solnit discusses "The Beginning Comes After the End", a thrilling account of the sheer breadth and scale of social, political, scientific, and cultural change over the past three quarters of a century.
About this event
In this sequel to her enduring bestseller Hope in the Dark, Solnit surveys a world that has changed dramatically since the year 1960. Despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history, change is not a possibility; it is an inevitability. 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.
While the white nationalist and authoritarian backlash drives individualism and isolation, 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.
More on the book here
Rebecca Solnit, Author and Activist
Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than 25 books, including Orwell’s Roses, Hope in the Dark, Men Explain Things to Me, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. A longtime climate and human rights activist, she serves on the boards of Oil Change International and Third Act. Her newsletter of essays and analyses can be found at meditationsinanemergency.com.
Bill McKibben, Author, Educator, Activist, founder of Third Act
Bill McKibben is the author of more than twenty books, including the bestsellers The End of Nature, Falter, and Deep Economy. He is the founder of Third Act, a project organizing people over sixty for progressive change. He is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, and serves as the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College.
Bill was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel,’ in the Swedish Parliament. He’s also won the Gandhi Peace Award and honorary degrees from 19 colleges and universities. He lives in Vermont with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern.
