George Orwell's books have been read by millions and hailed as essential texts for combating autocracy. It's not easy to find new angles on such a prominent figure, but Rebecca Solnit has done just that. That she succeeds in impressive fashion will surprise no one who's familiar with the work of the polymathic San Franciscan. In "Orwell's Roses," a bracing mix of biography, history, journalism and criticism, Solnit uses the English writer's little-known love of gardening as fuel for inspired reflections on his work, hobbies, politics and nature. Readers who appreciate beauty or wisdom — anyone who enjoys books, basically — will find plenty to like in these pages. Solnit's many books include "Infinite City," an ingenious portrait of San Francisco made up of maps, illustrations and essays. Her work embodies a quality that she has long admired in Orwell's books: the capacity, in nonfiction titles like "Homage to Catalonia" — his 1938 account of the Spanish Civil War, during which he was shot — "to make room for the small and subjective inside something big and historic," as she puts it. She cites part of Orwell's 1946 essay "Why I Write" — "I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information" — as a personal "credo." A few years ago, Solnit told a friend about Orwell's essay on the roses he planted at his cottage in Wallington, England. Could the flowers still be there? Unsatisfied with grainy online images of the property, Solnit decided to explore in person. In Wallington, Solnit finds some rosebushes, though it's not certain Orwell planted them. It's a ho-hum result, perhaps inspiring her to think even harder about fleeting beauty and engagement with nature. "In an age of lies and illusions" — this, I think, applies to Orwell's era and our own — gardens bring us closer to "the processes of growth and the passage of time, the rules of physics, meteorology, hydrology, and biology, and the realms of the senses," she writes. When Orwell planted his roses in 1936, he was writing "The Road to Wigan Pier," which was published the following year. For Solnit, his nonfiction book on mining and poverty is a leaping-off point for wide-ranging chapters about child labor, pollution and London's crippling midcentury smog, and Orwell's poor health.