A review by kosr
Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, by Chris Hedges
5.0
I have to share a bizarre story that occurred around the reading of this book.
Being from London England means Hedges books aren't readily available from bookstores (I saw his latest work America: The Farewell Tour in Foyles bookstore on Tottenham Court Road once; that's it) and the reality is second hand websites or overseas shipping by request to a UK bookstore are the answer to the desire to purchase his work. It should be mentioned that if Hedges isn't mainstream in the US then he really isn't here in the UK. He's not massively well known here at all (a shame).
With regards to this book, I have actually read a number of Hedges other work and decided to plow into this next one by purchasing it online around mid-2019. After quite some time the book didn't arrive and I was refunded. These American published books take a while to arrive and usually I have to build the enthusiasm to make the purchase considering the high price and shipping costs, so I moved onto other books and lost the imperative to dig into another project Hedges undertook. I'll admit this was the one book I'd heard really good stuff about and I'd wanted to read it for a while.
Fast forward to Summer 2020, just after the first Covid19 lockdown had ended in UK and I'm visiting the Midlands in the Lake District with some other people. We're staying up in quiet village in Sedbergh in what really was the middle of nowhere for a couple of days. About a day into our stay, I'm walking with someone down a street and we pass a small converted bus shelter that's now housing a food collection box, and a very small library of the towns used books in a window case on the shelter wall (overwhelmingly rubbish fiction and local geography / map books). I have a habit of always keeping an eye on any secondhand bookstores of any denomination as I've found some gems in unlikely places. This was no exception, so I decided to scan the books for anything interesting.
Well, I'm thinking you've guessed what I found. But let me just preemptively explain how insane it was that I found Days of Destruction Days of Revolt, a book about the worse affected areas of the US by unfettered capitalism, in an unassuming farm village in the Midlands of the UK (as if that's not absurd enough). This book was utterly alone amongst garbage fiction, tucked away top left of the shelf by someone; almost too easy to miss. It was a hardback first edition with its cover jacket in pretty good condition also. Furthermore, this was written in 2012 (so no excuse of being a 'new book' in circulation) fully eight years ago, by someone not very well known even in the US let alone the UK. The chances of finding this book - a book I'd recently mentioned to the person I was walking with that I'd wished I had gotten the chance to read not long prior - were just stupidly astronomical. So much so I stood there holding it in a kind of stupor for about fifteen seconds before showing the person I was walking with what I'd found (they were equally dumbfounded).
If this had been some other book this might have seemed a slight overreaction. Even if I'd found this in a London charity bookstore (which would still be rare) I would've held back from typing this all out. But the fact that all the above mentioned set of circumstances led to me finding this book is, frankly, borderline freaky. I'd encourage anyone to type in Sedbergh, UK into Google maps to see how out of town it is; its practically nestled between a bunch of hills and mountains.
I would've be excited to know there was a left leaning Hedges reader in the remote town of Sedbergh (maybe this would be where the revolution would start in the UK, right?) if the inside of the book wasn't annotated by the previous reader (clearly the one who dropped the book in the bus shelter) criticising every page in the book. It definitely added to the flavour of the whole event, and my favourite annotation was at the end of the chapter 'Days of Siege' in which Hedges quotes a poem he left on the tomb of the author who wrote said poem in Camdem (US, not London Camden).
Hedges leaves a poem quote to end the chapter, and written by the previous reader - in quite beautiful handwriting - in pencil next to the poem quote was: The Narcissistic and the Anecdotal.
Yanked me right out of the harrowing chapter on US poverty right into the previous British readers clear distaste for anything melodramatic or poetic. Beautiful.
As for the book? Along with America: The Farwell Tour, this book is definitely Hedges strongest work. Harrowing and beautiful, Joe Saccos artwork makes it even more riveting to read also.
Being from London England means Hedges books aren't readily available from bookstores (I saw his latest work America: The Farewell Tour in Foyles bookstore on Tottenham Court Road once; that's it) and the reality is second hand websites or overseas shipping by request to a UK bookstore are the answer to the desire to purchase his work. It should be mentioned that if Hedges isn't mainstream in the US then he really isn't here in the UK. He's not massively well known here at all (a shame).
With regards to this book, I have actually read a number of Hedges other work and decided to plow into this next one by purchasing it online around mid-2019. After quite some time the book didn't arrive and I was refunded. These American published books take a while to arrive and usually I have to build the enthusiasm to make the purchase considering the high price and shipping costs, so I moved onto other books and lost the imperative to dig into another project Hedges undertook. I'll admit this was the one book I'd heard really good stuff about and I'd wanted to read it for a while.
Fast forward to Summer 2020, just after the first Covid19 lockdown had ended in UK and I'm visiting the Midlands in the Lake District with some other people. We're staying up in quiet village in Sedbergh in what really was the middle of nowhere for a couple of days. About a day into our stay, I'm walking with someone down a street and we pass a small converted bus shelter that's now housing a food collection box, and a very small library of the towns used books in a window case on the shelter wall (overwhelmingly rubbish fiction and local geography / map books). I have a habit of always keeping an eye on any secondhand bookstores of any denomination as I've found some gems in unlikely places. This was no exception, so I decided to scan the books for anything interesting.
Well, I'm thinking you've guessed what I found. But let me just preemptively explain how insane it was that I found Days of Destruction Days of Revolt, a book about the worse affected areas of the US by unfettered capitalism, in an unassuming farm village in the Midlands of the UK (as if that's not absurd enough). This book was utterly alone amongst garbage fiction, tucked away top left of the shelf by someone; almost too easy to miss. It was a hardback first edition with its cover jacket in pretty good condition also. Furthermore, this was written in 2012 (so no excuse of being a 'new book' in circulation) fully eight years ago, by someone not very well known even in the US let alone the UK. The chances of finding this book - a book I'd recently mentioned to the person I was walking with that I'd wished I had gotten the chance to read not long prior - were just stupidly astronomical. So much so I stood there holding it in a kind of stupor for about fifteen seconds before showing the person I was walking with what I'd found (they were equally dumbfounded).
If this had been some other book this might have seemed a slight overreaction. Even if I'd found this in a London charity bookstore (which would still be rare) I would've held back from typing this all out. But the fact that all the above mentioned set of circumstances led to me finding this book is, frankly, borderline freaky. I'd encourage anyone to type in Sedbergh, UK into Google maps to see how out of town it is; its practically nestled between a bunch of hills and mountains.
I would've be excited to know there was a left leaning Hedges reader in the remote town of Sedbergh (maybe this would be where the revolution would start in the UK, right?) if the inside of the book wasn't annotated by the previous reader (clearly the one who dropped the book in the bus shelter) criticising every page in the book. It definitely added to the flavour of the whole event, and my favourite annotation was at the end of the chapter 'Days of Siege' in which Hedges quotes a poem he left on the tomb of the author who wrote said poem in Camdem (US, not London Camden).
Hedges leaves a poem quote to end the chapter, and written by the previous reader - in quite beautiful handwriting - in pencil next to the poem quote was: The Narcissistic and the Anecdotal.
Yanked me right out of the harrowing chapter on US poverty right into the previous British readers clear distaste for anything melodramatic or poetic. Beautiful.
As for the book? Along with America: The Farwell Tour, this book is definitely Hedges strongest work. Harrowing and beautiful, Joe Saccos artwork makes it even more riveting to read also.