Product Description

An All-Access Pass to the Populist
Insurrection Brewing Across the Country

Job outsourcing. Perpetual busy signals at government agencies. Slashed paychecks. Stolen elections. A war without end, fatally mismanaged. Ordinary Americans on both the Right and Left are tired of being disenfranchised by corrupt politicians of both parties and are organizing to change the status quo. In his invigorating new book, David Sirota investigates whether this uprising can be transformed into a unified, lasting political movement.

Throughout the course of American history, uprisings like the one we are seeing now have given birth to powerful movements to end wars, protect workers, and expand civil rights, so the prospect of today’s uprising turning into a full-fledged populist movement terrifies Wall Street and Washington. In The Uprising, Sirota takes us far from the national media spotlight into the trenches where real change is happening—from the headquarters of the most powerful third party in America to the bowels of the U.S. Senate; from the auditorium of an ExxonMobil shareholder meeting to the quasi-military staging area of a vigilante force on the Mexican border. This is vital, on-the-ground reporting that immerses us in the tumultuous give-and-take of politics at its most personal.

Sirota also offers a biting critique of our politics. He shows how the uprising is, at its core, a reaction to faux “bipartisanship” in the nation’s capital—the “bipartisanship” whereby Republican and Democratic lawmakers join together in putting the agenda of corporate interests above all those of ordinary citizens.

Ultimately, Sirota reminds us that the Declaration of Independence, “America’s original uprising manifesto,” says that governments “derive their powers from the consent of the governed.” Irreverent and insightful, The Uprising shows how the governed have stopped consenting and have started taking action.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35667 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-27
• Released on: 2008-05-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The signs are out there and Sirota believes they imply a forthcoming wide-ranging insurrection. From shifting politics in Montana's state government to the influence of a third political party in New York to the role and positioning of socialist senator Bernie Sanders, to the rise of a militia guarding the Mexican border; moments of dissent, resistance, and change are registering all over the United States. Sirota is quick to point out the more problematic and contradictory issues with these blips on the radar, but he also ably explains the significance of these events in relation to the larger picture. Lloyd James delivers a solid rendering of the text with a consistent tone that provides nuance and subtlety, especially in Sirota's more reflective moments. He provides some personality to characters but not much more than the text dictates, even when dealing with more well-known public figures. A Crown hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 28).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Sirota reports cleverly and in pleasing detail about a complex world of political conflict"
—Washington Post

“Audacious. . . . Sirota has a true gift for phrase-making and the pithy comment.”
—Providence Journal

"Sirota (Hostile Takeover ) chronicles how ordinary citizens on the right and the left are marshaling their frustrations with the government into uprisings across the country and analyzes the effectiveness and longevity of their efforts. Citing developments as disparate as progressive political victories in the Montana state senate and the rise of the California Minutemen militia, the author weaves entertaining case studies, keeping his tone conversational, the narrative fast-paced and the content accessible. Sirota hits numerous high notes, including a fine elucidation of continuing Democratic support for the Iraq War, a breakdown of the "echo chamber" qualities of beltway television shows like Hardball and salient observations of how and why the Democratic Party severed ties with the liberal uprising of the '60s era. According to Sirota, "The activism and energy frothing today is disconnected and atomized. The only commonality between it all is rage." It remains to be seen whether this rage will snowball into something large enough to upset entrenched political systems, but for the time being, this book presents a rousing account of the local uprisings already in effect."
—Publishers Weekly

"After so many decades of fake  populism--of revolts by the wealthy, red-state fantasies, and stock-picking  grandmas--could we finally be looking at the real thing? In this compelling  book, rooted in history but as contemporary as this morning's newspaper, David  Sirota gives us reason to hope."
—Thomas Frank,  author of What's the Matter with Kansas? and The  Wre...

Review
"Sirota reports cleverly and in pleasing detail about a complex world of political conflict"
—Washington Post

“Audacious. . . . Sirota has a true gift for phrase-making and the pithy comment.”
—Providence Journal

"Sirota (Hostile Takeover ) chronicles how ordinary citizens on the right and the left are marshaling their frustrations with the government into uprisings across the country and analyzes the effectiveness and longevity of their efforts. Citing developments as disparate as progressive political victories in the Montana state senate and the rise of the California Minutemen militia, the author weaves entertaining case studies, keeping his tone conversational, the narrative fast-paced and the content accessible. Sirota hits numerous high notes, including a fine elucidation of continuing Democratic support for the Iraq War, a breakdown of the "echo chamber" qualities of beltway television shows like Hardball and salient observations of how and why the Democratic Party severed ties with the liberal uprising of the '60s era. According to Sirota, "The activism and energy frothing today is disconnected and atomized. The only commonality between it all is rage." It remains to be seen whether this rage will snowball into something large enough to upset entrenched political systems, but for the time being, this book presents a rousing account of the local uprisings already in effect."
—Publishers Weekly

"After so many decades of fake  populism--of revolts by the wealthy, red-state fantasies, and stock-picking  grandmas--could we finally be looking at the real thing? In this compelling  book, rooted in history but as contemporary as this morning's newspaper, David  Sirota gives us reason to hope."
—Thomas Frank,  author of What's the Matter with Kansas? and The  Wrecking Crew

"David Sirota is honest, uncompromising, passionate, and a brilliant communicator. He is the most important progressive voice we have in this country. The Uprising should be read by anyone who wants to understand exactly how the ordinary person has been sold out by the political system."
 —Matt Taibbi, national political correspondent for Rolling Stone and author of The Great  Derangement

 "This book engages in the nearly lost art of reporting to tell us what's going on in the many places that the elite media can't be bothered to look. It chronicles just how fed up Americans have become, and nominates a few heroes for them to turn to: that great senator Bernie Sanders, or the activist nun Pat Daly, for instance. It cheered me a good deal to read how many Americans are finally starting to fight back against the rule of greed that has been our lot for too many years."
 —Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy and The Bill  McKibben Reader

  "With a historian’s and a journalist’s storytelling gifts, David Sirota describes the populist tide that so many elites fear and ignore at all our peril: multinational corporations that rip off local communities as if they were resource colonies, a national security state that manipulates our young to bleed for that same empire, and a political elite more concerned with preserving its power than empowering citizens to become self-governing. Since leaving the Beltway behind, David Sirota has become a must-read chronicler in the populist tradition."  
—Tom Hayden, author of The Tom Hayden Reader and  Ending the War in Iraq
           
"David Sirota details with clarity the sharp knife of corporate greed pointed at the throat of our democracy--and the populist uprising that may thwart the threat if enough Americans heed his call. If you love your country, buy The Uprising, read it, and act."
—Joe Trippi, chief presidential campaign strategist for Howard Dean and John Edwards and author of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

"David Sirota is a clear-headed and principled hell-raiser for economic justice. More like him and we'll have a real uprising on our hands. "
—Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine

Customer Reviews

A disconnected and atomized "uprising"
Excellent writers are like great chefs; you don't really need to know what they're writing/cooking to know you're in for a treat. In this case, we've got David Sirota riffing (and reporting) on how a bunch of "disconnected and atomized" rage is "frothing" in America.

Whether it's anti-illegal-immigrant vigilantes, frustrated high-tech workers, "blue chip revolutionaries," "Uprising Television" (or radio or blogs), netroots activists, the anti-tax movement or the anti-anti-tax movement, there certainly appear to be a lot of pissed off people out there in America today. Just look at polls that show 80%+ of people who feel the country's headed in the wrong direction. Look at the huge turnout in this year's presidential primaries -- particularly on the Democratic side -- and the upsurge in political energy being shown by people around the country. Look at the anger at the President, at the Congress, at many of our institutions.

The question is, does all this add up to a "populist uprising?" Even David Sirota is skeptical, but he certainly sees the potential for such an uprising, and apparently so does a nervous corporate American and insider political establishment. In the end, I'm not sure that Sirota has completely proved his thesis, that "the disparate pieces of this uprising are all part of one enraged backlash." However, after reading his well-written, well-researched, informative, and entertaining book, I'm far less likely to write off that thesis as a definite possibility in coming years.

Fantastic
Well-written, better than "Hostile Takeover." You can tell now by reading this book that Sirota has more confidence in his writing style and isn't afraid to pepper his stories with a very human narrator, something that's important in titles like this where readers are given a very close-up look at a particular institution. The book is extremely informative (I had never even heard of "Third-Party Fusion" before reading this book, and now I want to know how I can bring it to Wisconsin!), and the intimate glimpses inside Washington and everywhere else shows readers various sides of issues that we don't normally see in the corporate press. I'm actually quite surprised to see another reviewer attack Sirota because of his chapter on the Minutemen on the border. I thought the chapter was actually quite fair, maybe TOO fair given how many of the people he meets seem to be struggling to hide their racism, but that's just one opinion. Either way, it's an intimate glimpse into a movement, just like every other chapter, and every chapter offers something we can learn from.

Long Live the Uprising
The Populist Uprising has a long and rich history in this country, and in his new book noted author David Sirota demonstrates that this movement is alive and well (on both the Left and the Right) is alive and well. Sirota is a wonderful political writer who possesses that rare knack of being able to clearly outline his position without a lot of jargon that so plagues other political authors. Love him or hate him, Sirota has a lot to say, and this is one book that should be read by everyone.