Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
1,519 global ratings
5 star
71%
4 star
16%
3 star
6%
2 star
4%
1 star
3%
How are ratings calculated?
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Review this product

Reviews with images

Customer image
Customer image
See all customer images

Read reviews that mention

explain things rebecca solnit men explain virginia woolf collection of essays highly recommend men and women title essay well written violence against women eye opening thought provoking pandora box progress that has been made marriage equality women and rights quick read paradise built longest war built in hell
Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Lisa in Cali
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic!
Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2020
Verified Purchase
Written to the point and to the heart of the matter. Don't explain things to me that I understand better than you and don't tell me to smile. These seem like small things, but follow the thread. They are significant parts of a much larger picture. I have said these words for YEARS and it's nice to read someone else's thoughts that echo my own. Highly recommended reading for young women who weren't around when this fight began. Perspective is everything in finding our path forward.
Read more
Ian
4.0 out of 5 stars Some Thoughts On/For Conservative Readers
Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2015
Verified Purchase
I bought this book for my brother-in-law shortly after my sister gave birth to a daughter. I thought it would be a fun “Hey, you have a daughter, this might be a good thing to start thinking about”-type gift. And so he didn’t feel totally alone while reading it, I bought myself a copy as well.

Solnit is clearly a powerful mind and talented writer. Her prose is strong and forceful, and she writes with stirring— at times contagious—- conviction. The book’s most powerful essays (“Men Explain Things To Me” and “#YesAllWomen”) are intelligent, clear-sighted looks at a massive, difficult, dangerous topic. It’s saddens me to applaud Solnit for her courage in writing this, if only because that acknowledges the typical backlash against women who speak out against misogyny, but she IS courageous and that alone warrants commendation.

The book starts out with a funny, almost playful anecdote about being mansplained to by a pompous idiot at a party in Aspen, but then quickly moves into darker waters. Solnit goes on to use politics, art, history and new media as springboards for discussing the interconnectedness of cultural misogyny and how mansplaining and rape can be viewed as existing on a continuum. Towards the end of the book she summarizes this nicely: “It’s a slippery slope. That’s why we need to address the slope, rather than compartmentalizing the varieties of misogyny and dealing with them separately.” (p. 134) It’s a new way of looking at an ancient problem, articulated in a way that I don’t think I’ve heard before, and Solnit rounds out her case by anticipating counter arguments (i.e. men being falsely imprisoned for rape) and responding to them to the degree that they deserve.

So here’s the part where I complain: While her arguments are culturally important and her writing is strong, Solnit’s rhetoric seems, at times, deliberately hyperbolic and meant to divide readers. On pg. 57 she describes the case of Ariel Castro, a man accused of imprisoning, torturing and sexually abusing three women as being “a vicious version of the traditional [marriage] arrangement.” Later on in the book (p. 153) she takes a similar swipe at capitalism: “There’s more that we need to be liberated from… a system that serves environmental destruction and limitless consumption…” And beyond that there’s a general celebration of revolution, (non-violent) anarchy, as well as Solnit’s insistence that this is, indeed, “a war.” In other words, if you’re traditional / conservative / old-fashioned, then chances are you’re probably going to feel pretty alienated while reading this, if not all out attacked. I don’t consider myself conservative, but there were still times when I felt myself getting defensive. With that said, I was less annoyed with this on ideological terms than I was by what felt like a tactical mis-step. Simply put: This is a wise book. This is an important book. A lot of people should be reading it and absorbing it's message. And I could suddenly feel thousands of readers— good people who’s minds are ready to be expanded— fleeing from it’s very positive message, because they were being lumped in with rapists and murderers. I was frustrated because I felt like the book was preaching to the choir and, in-so-doing, entrenching conservatives deeper into their current belief systems.

One could argue that this book isn't intended to convert and so it's unfair to judge it by those standards; that it’s a celebration and reminder of what’s already been accomplished in the fight for gender equality, and that now it’s up to someone else to write the gentler, more palatable book that eases The Other Side into progressive thinking. And you know what— that may very well be the case. In the meantime, I encourage conservative thinkers who are interested in reading this to do so with an open mind instead of just looking for things to disagree with. Because the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of what’s discussed in this book really has nothing to do with superficial left / right politics and everything to do with how we want our nieces/daughters to be treated as they grow up in the world. And that feels like something we can all agree on.
Read more
Peter
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant book. It changed my perspective.
Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2017
Verified Purchase
Brilliant book. It changed my perspective. It starts with an amusing story about mansplaining. Solnit then ties the dynamic behind mansplaining to a web of much more sinister problems including all angles of men exploiting women and nations exploiting each other. Contrary to critical reviews, the book is unified as the points relate to each other. Conservatives might not enjoy the book, but that is also not the point.

Contrary to critical reviews,
Read more
Juliet Waldron
5.0 out of 5 stars True and Timely
Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2017
Verified Purchase
I grew up in the 50's and so have lived through the last 60 years of the ongoing struggle for equality, equal rights and equal pay--and the every day ongoing struggle simply to be treated as a human being with free will. And, of course, beyond the equality issue, there's always the inherent danger involved simply because you are born female. I was continually warned and told what I could do, what I could wear and where I could go. I lived in a 3rd World country as an adolescent, and believe me, we young women paid attention to the advice to "dress like a lady" "don't go out after dark alone" "don't meet anyone's eyes" etc. etc. Being female, for much of my life, has been been like having, through no fault of my own, a target painted on my back. Long story short, this book connects a whole lot of dots, with a clear-eyed glance through history and from there into the realities of the present, where not much below the surface gloss has changed. Everyone with a HS or college age girl -- or boy, for that matter - should purchase a copy of this fierce, beautifully written, TRUE book and then preach on the text. In 149 pages, Ms. Solnit turns my gaze toward a better, more honest future in which both sexes can claim power and respect.
Read more
See all reviews

Top reviews from other countries

Hannah Carrier
5.0 out of 5 stars Best non fiction book of the year
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 29, 2018
Verified Purchase
Besides from this book having an absolutely beautiful cover, this book is an absolute gem in itself! It is short and a quick read but a really important one. I learned so much about this book – it is about so much more than ‘mansplaining’. It talks about male violence to each other and to women. Did you know that the world-wide leading cause of death in women aged 15 – 44 years is male violence? That’s over war, disease, cancer and traffic accidents! Did you know that in most parts of the US a male rapist has more rights than his victim and can even sue them over abortions or for custody? Rebecca raises SO many important questions in this book and I came away angry but more informed.

This is a great book filled with facts and important issues that affect all of us. Rebecca Solnit is a force to be reckoned with. Is there anything she can't write about brilliantly?
Read more
Lady Fancifull
5.0 out of 5 stars ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’ for the Twenty-First Century
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 30, 2017
Verified Purchase
I have adored Rebecca Solnit’s writing since I found her wonderful book exploring an activity almost all of us do, or have done, and take for granted, though some of us have a passion for it – walking. Her book Wanderlust, A History of Walking showed what a fine, broad, interesting mind she has, exploring the biology and evolution of walking, the development of walking for pleasure instead of necessity, cultural attitudes to walking, the sexual politics of walking, walking as resistance and political action, and much much more.

So I knew I was going to be absorbed, educated, enlightened angered and amused by Men Explain Things To Me and Other Essays, a collection of investigations into various aspects of the relationship between men and women, and into the workings of a society which has clearly shown of late how far we still have to go

In the first, title essay, Solnit looks at ‘mansplaining’ though she doesn’t use the term , with a laugh-and-wince encounter with someone who clearly was all mouth and no ears.

The Longest War explores the dark subject of rape.

“We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it’s almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern. Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender”

Worlds collide in a Luxury Suite takes the issue of power and domination into the relationship between capitalism, the IMF, and the way the developing world has been exploited and held back. She links this story with the personal one of Dominique Strauss-Kahn formerly head of the IMF, and the African chambermaid he was charged with assaulting

In Praise of the Threat looks at the changing history of marriage, and how same-sex marriage, without the historic inequalities of marriage between the sexes, metaphysically may make for a recognition that a marriage should be between equals. Which is not what marriage has traditionally been.

Grandmother Spider examines the invisibility of women within much genealogy. Look at the Bible, as example. All those begats, almost all men. Where are the daughters in the list, where the mothers?

“Fathers have sons and grandsons and so the lineage goes, with the name passed on; the tree branches, and the longer it goes on the more people are missing: sisters, aunts, mothers, grandmothers, great-grand-mothers, a vast population made to disappear on paper and in history”

Woolf’s Darkness is a celebration of Virginia Woolf, and her willingness to face the darkness – her own and the world’s, and to engage with the mysteriousness of life, and the not-knowing. This is probably the most poetic of the essays. By which I mean that it takes the reader, by flash of unknown and surprising juxtapositions, as poetry does, into seeing the non-linear nature of our lives

“We know less when we erroneously think we know than when we recognise that we don’t. Sometimes I think these pretences at authoritative knowledge are failures of language: the language of bold assertion is simpler, less taxing, than the language of nuance and ambiguity and speculation”

Pandora’s Box and the Volunteer Police Force is a celebration of feminism, which, as Solnit points out is not just about changing women’s lives for the better. We (men and women) are on a journey here

“Feminism is an endeavour to change something very old, widespread, and deeply rooted in many, perhaps most, cultures around the world, Innumerable institutions, and most households on Earth – and in our minds, where it all begins and end”

“I think the future of something we may no longer call feminism must include a deeper inquiry into men. Feminism sought and seeks to change the whole human world; many men are on board with the project, but how it benefits men, and in what ways the status quo damages men as well, could bear far more thought”

Thought provoking, articulate, beautifully written; thoroughly recommended
Read more
Susan Stepney
5.0 out of 5 stars beautifully written with verve, and passion, and rage
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 1, 2019
Verified Purchase
The first essay in this little book starts with Solnit's now-famous anecdote about a man explaining her own book to her. The term “mansplaining” was subsequently invented by another author, and so we now have a name with which to skewer this kind of behaviour.

After the light-hearted tone used for telling this anecdote (albeit with more than a hint of gritted teeth), the essay rapidly gets darker and more serious. The whole book is a short series of essays covering various aspects of patriarchy: from mansplaining, to rape culture; from why same sex marriage equality does indeed threaten “traditional”, that is, grossly unequal, marriage, to the obliteration of women's voices; from arguing with Susan Sontag arguing with Virginia Woolf, to the history of women's movement.

All this is beautifully written with verve, and passion, and rage, and makes for excellent, but uncomfortable, reading.
Read more
W.L.
5.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 13, 2019
Verified Purchase
This is a great little book of essays that will stay with you long after you have read it. Witty, fair and thoughtful. I would highly recommend this, Rebecca Solnit puts forward great ideas without men bashing. The book is great value and beautifully presented.
Read more
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Add this to your essentials of modern feminism
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 7, 2018
Verified Purchase
This is essential reading for modern feminists. Solnit's writing style is very skillful - personal enough to draw the reader in and keep her writing enjoyable, but without blurring her analysis of society's problematic phenomena.
Read more
See all reviews