Recollections of My Nonexistence

Rebecca Solnit is one of the best sociopolitical writers we have (she's the coiner of the term "mansplaining") but I like to imagine a better world in which she doesn't feel obligated to take on tyrants, terrorists, and people who occupy more than one seat on the train. Because when she's not making devastatingly cogent arguments in support of truth, justice, and the American way, she's one of the best writers we have, period. Whether the subject is history, travel, architecture, or nature, her limpid prose elevates and illuminates it. In the memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence, her subject for the first time is herself, the young woman who came of age as a human being and a writer in once-bohemian but increasingly gentrified San Francisco. Since we don't live in the better world of my imagination, this is a political book as well as a personal one, examining the ways in which our culture tries to erase women individually and collectively. It's an essential addition to a body of work for the ages. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter)