Rebecca Solnit has made a vocation out of journeying into difficult territory and reporting back, as an environmentalist, antiglobalization activist and public intellectual. 'Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics' is an anthology of her essential essays from the past ten years. It takes the reader from the Pyrenees to the U.S.-Mexican border, from San Francisco to London, from open sky to the deepest mines and from the antislavery struggles of two hundred years ago to today's street protests.