The Rebels Audiobook

One of the best and most readable overviews of the Democrats evolution on economic issues over the past halfcentury The Wall Street Journal

From the author of the 1 New York Times bestseller Devils Bargain comes the revelatory inside story of the uprising within the Democratic Party of the economic populists led by Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders and Alexandria OcasioCortez

In his classic book Devils Bargain Joshua Green chronicled how the forces of economic populism on the right led by the likes of Steve Bannon turned Donald Trump into their flawed but powerful vessel In The Rebels he gives an epic account of the long struggle that has played out in parallel on the left told through an intimate reckoning with the careers of the three political figures who have led the charge most prominently Based on remarkable inside sourcing and razorsharp analysis The Rebels uses the grand narrative of a political party undergoing tumult and transformation to tell an even larger story about the fate of America

For many years as Green recounts the Democrats made their bed with Wall Street and big tech relying on corporate money for electioneering and embracing the worldview that technological and financial innovation and globalization were a powerful net good a rising tide lifting all boats Yes there were howls of pain but they were written off by most of the elites as the moaning of sore losers mired in the past There were always some Democratic politicians representing the old labor base who resisted the new dispensation but these figures never made it very far on a national level For one thing they didnt have the money But as income inequality ballooned widening the gulf between the wealthy elite and everyone else pressures began to build

With the 2008 crisis those forces finally erupted into plain sight turning this books protagonists into national icons At its heart The Rebels tells the riveting human story of the rise and fight of Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders andAlexandria OcasioCortezfrom the financial crisis on as outrage over the unfairness of the American system formed a flood tide of political revolutionThat same tide that would sweep Trump into office was blunted on the left as the Democratic party found itself riven by culture war issues between its centrists and its progressives But the winds behind economic populism still howl at gale force Whether the Democrats can bridge their divisions and home in on a vision that unites the party and perhaps even the country in the face of the most violently deranged political landscape since the Civil War will be the ultimate test of the legacies of all three characters

A masterful account of one of the defining political stories of our age The Rebels cements Joshua Greens stature at the first rank of American writers explaining how weve arrived at this pass and what lies ahead