I highly recommend David Sirota’s new book The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington. Many progressive political books, and just about all conservative political books, are crap and not worth the paper they’re printed on. That’s because politics is as simple as tic tac toe, and there’s never anything new to say about it. As Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adam in 1813,
To me then it appears that there have been differences of opinion, and party differences, from the establishment of governments to the present day, and on the same question which now divides our country, that these will continue through all future times…everyone takes his side in favor of the many, or of the few…nothing new can be added by you or me to what has been said by others, and will be said in every age.
But what can be done is serious, high quality reporting on what exactly is happening in the times we’re living in. Almost no one ever tries this because it’s hard work. But Sirota does in The Uprising—it’s full of useful and encouraging information about what regular people are doing all over the country to deal with the extremely serious problems we face.
This week Sirota is at TPM Cafe to talk about it. Check it out.