"Waking in the morning and shivering on the pier, feeling a weird black hole, a sort of hole inside a confusion inside a need, the immensity of the world, the unbelievable hugeness of it all, reduced to a scrap of newspaper a woman uses to wipe her mouth after a meal."

This book pulses. The energy of hope runs through each line like veins pumping lifeblood to your core. Based on the events of the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, the beautiful way in which this story is told begs you ask these questions of yourself: What do you believe in? What would you do for your ideals? What is most important? Can you look beyond yourself?  Regardless of whether you've stood on the streets in actual protest, fist held high in the air, have you ever raised your heart for a cause?

If you are looking for a book that is just beautifully written, if you desperately need to drink deeply of inspiring and light-giving language, this book is the perfect tall glass to drown yourself in. The yearning for something bigger than yourself. The vitality and vibrancy of life itself and what a gift it is to live. The paramount importance of love, not romantically, but of everything and everyone. 

This book is not supposed to make you happy. But it makes you think and it makes you feel. It makes you question and it makes you grateful. Do not expect a happy ending, do not expect all loose ends to be tied. That just isn't how things go sometimes, and this book is real. Realer than anything I've read in a long time. 

p.s. The f-bomb is used in EXCESS. Like really, it's overboard. I did something that I've never done before though, and took a pen to my book. I blacked each one out as I came across it. Generally, I'll read it once and put it on the donation pile if the swearing is over the top, but I really want to keep this book. So I censored my own copy so I could be guilt free the next time around. Two references to breasts, three to sex (but never describes it or says its happening, really just uses the word sex), all towards the beginning of the book. Then its just the language to watch out for.