"I'm checking in from West Africa, where I've been working with women in three neighboring
countries, all recently torn apart by civil wars: Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d'Ivoire.
The Iraq debacle has monopolized attention and obscured these "lesser" wars -- now officially
"over" -- but millions of West African women are struggling to recover. For them, the war
isn't really over at all, not by a long shot. This is the war story that's never truly told."
"Digital cameras are the tool. I arrive with them and lend them to women, most of whom have
never seen a camera before. I teach them to point and shoot -- only that -- and then I turn
them loose to snap what they will. I ask them to bring me some photos of their problems and
their blessings. They work in teams, two or three women sharing a camera and very nervous at
first. (Some women actually shake.) It takes the whole team to snap the first photos: one
holds the camera, another points, another shoots."
"Seemingly lost in the woods of deceit and banality, bereft of hope, we are confronted by Rebecca Solnit and her astonishing flashlight. In a jewel of a book that is poetic in substance as well as style, she reveals where we were, where we are and the step-by-step advances that have been made in human rights, as we stubbornly stumble out of the darkness." --Studs Terkel
