by Rebecca Solnit is a collection of biographical essays about the writer George Orwell that illuminates the many facets of the author, who is primarily remembered these days for his politics. Solnit uses the roses that Orwell planted at his cottage in the English countryside to examine the side of Orwell that delighted in the ordinary joys of life, was a prolific essayist and felt that true freedom included the right to pleasure and beauty along with other intangible rights. This is a nuanced portrait of Orwell, one that also takes into account his flaws--his imperialist roots, as well as the fraught colonial history of roses as a symbol of perfect pastoral Englishness. (Non-Fiction)