The incomparable Rebecca Solnit, author of more than a dozen acclaimed, prizewinning books of nonfiction including Men Explain Things To Me , brings the same dazzling writing to the essays in The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness ; hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "globally wide-ranging and topically urgent and the Boston Globe as "luminous and precise.". As the title suggests, the territory of Solnit's concerns is vast, and in her signature alchemical style she combines commentary on history, justice, war and peace, and explorations of place, art, and community, all while writing with the lyricism of a poet to achieve incandescence and wisdom. Gathered here are celebrated iconic essays along with little-known pieces that create a powerful survey of the world we live in, from the jungles of the Zapatistas in Mexico to the splendors of the Arctic. This rich collection tours places as diverse as Haiti and Iceland; movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring; an original take on the question of who did Henry David Thoreau's laundry; and a searching look at what the hatred of country music really means. Solnit moves nimbly from Orwell to Elvis, to contemporary urban gardening to 1970s California macramé and punk rock, and on to searing questions about the environment, freedom, family, class, work, and friendship. It's no wonder she's been compared in Bookforum to Susan Sontag and Annie Dillard and in the San Francisco Chronicle to Joan Didion. The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness proves Rebecca Solnit worthy of the accolades and honors she's received. Rarely can a reader find such penetrating critiques of our time and its failures leavened with such generous heapings of hope. Solnit looks back to history and the progress of political movements to find an antidote to despair in what many feel as lost causes. In its encyclopedic reach and its generous compassion, Solnit's collection charts a way through the thickets of our complex social and political worlds. Her essays are a beacon for readers looking for alternative ideas in these imperiled times.

The role of the military in a society raises a number of issues: How much separation should there be between a civil government and its army? Should the military be totally subordinate to the polity? Or should the armed forces be allowed autonomy in order to provide national security? Recently, the dangers of military dictatorships-as have existed in countries like Panama, Chile, and Argentina-have become evident. However, developing countries often lack the administrative ability and societal unity to keep the state functioning in an orderly and economically feasible manner without military intervention.Societies, of course, have dealt with the realities of these problems throughout their histories, and the action they have taken at any particular point in time has depended on numerous factors. In the "first world" of democratic countries, the civil-military relationship has been thoroughly integrated, and indeed by most modern standards this is seen as essential. However, several influential Western thinkers have developed theories arguing for the separation of the military from any political or social role. Samuel Huntington, emphasized that professionalism would presuppose that the military should intervene as little as possible in the political sphere. Samuel E. Finer, in contrast, emphasizes that a government can be efficient enough way to keep the civil-military relationship in check, ensuring that the need for intervention by the armed forces in society would be minimal. At the time of the book's original publication, perhaps as a consequence of a post-World War II Cold War atmosphere, this was by no means a universally accepted position. Some considered the military to be a legitimate threat to a free society. Today's post-Cold War environment is an appropriate time to reconsider Finer's classic argument.The Man on Horseback continues to be an important contribution to the study of the military's role in the realm of politics, and will be of interest to students of political science, government, and the military.