Join us on Monday, March 2nd at 7pm as we host Rebecca Solnit at The Internet Archive for the release of The Beginning Comes After the End. She will be joined in conversation by Jeff Chang. You will not want to miss this!

Tickets for this event are required and must be purchased via this page.

About the book

Rebecca Solnit offers a thrilling account of the sheer breadth and scale of social, political, scientific, and cultural change over the past three quarters of a century.

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. In this rising worldview, interconnection is a core idea and value. But because the transformation is obscured within a longer arc of history, its scale is seldom recognized.

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.

About the author

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.

JEFF CHANG is a writer, host, and a cultural organizer. His book, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, was named one of the best U.S. nonfiction books of the last quarter century. He has also written the award-winning books,  Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post Civil Rights America, and We Gon' Be Alright: Notes On Race and Resegregation. His bylines have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The Guardian, and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as Slate, Mother Jones, The Nation, n+1, and The Believer. He has been a Lucas Artist Fellow and has received the American Book Award, the Asian American Literary Award, and the USA Ford Fellowship in Literature. He is the host of the Signal award-winning podcast on artists and ideas, Edge of Reason, and of Notes From the Edge, produced by KALW Public Media. His next book, Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America (Mariner), is out on September 23, 2025.

About the bookstore

The Booksmith is an independent bookstore located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco since 1976.

Please note:

• This event will be taking place at The Internet Archive @ 300 Funston, San Francisco, CA
• Check-in begins at 6:20. Unclaimed seats are given up beginning at 7:05. This venue has pew-style seating.
• Books will be for sale on the night of the event in limited quantities.
• A limited number of books will be presigned and there will be a brief post-show signing as time allows.
• Questions? Accessibility requests? Write to us at [email protected].