The cover of H is for Hope by Elizabeth Kolbert
We’ve talked before about Elizabeth Kolbert, a writer whose words have reshaped how many of us see the planet we inhabit, her voice, sharp and measured, carrying the weight of a climate in crisis.
This week, I read her latest book, H Is for Hope, a brief but potent meditation on the precariousness of our existence. The audiobook, which I listened to, clocks in at just over ninety minutes, far shorter than Kolbert’s previous works, but that’s intentional. Ordinary citizens don’t need endless pages of data — we need to feel, to feel the crisis as something visceral, immediate.
The book’s structure — an alphabet of vignettes — feels almost whimsical. It’s a small, clever conceit, and yet it doesn’t trivialise the message. We can embrace creativity, Kolbert seems to say, even as we reckon with a reality so stark it defies imagination: we may not turn things around this time.
Kolbert doesn’t shy away from the enormity of the odds we are facing, but she also refuses to indulge in despair, that comfortable cloak. In fact, the chapter on D is the shortest, a mere whisper, and it reads:
DESPAIR
Despair is unproductive.
It is also a sin.
That’s the kind of clarity Kolbert brings — concise, urgent, unflinching, like a bell tolling in the gathering dusk. It’s what we need, whether we want it or not, this stark truth.
I rate H Is for Hope 5 stars.