Summary

Solnit introduces the next section of the book by saying, "I want to start the history of this present moment over again, not with the election or the war but with a series of surprises from the shadows that ushered in this millennium" (34). The first of these "surprises from the shadows" is November 9, 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Solnit announces that she was born the summer the Berlin Wall was erected, and remembers how she cried twenty-eight years later when she saw it coming down. She explains that it was the people themselves who brought down the wall, as East German authorities had only approved organized traffic flow across the boundary, not its destruction. Solnit refers to 1989 as a "year of miracles" (37) by mentioning the students of Tiananmen Square and Nelson Mandela's release from prison at the end of the year.

The...