Bernie for Burlington - by Dan Chiasson (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This utterly captivating symphonic story of city, a visionary, and the way our politics changed forever is told through the very specific people of Burlington, beginning with Dan Chiasson's own mall-punk friends of the 1980s: in a video that would go viral decades later in 2020, they engaged with the itinerant carpenter turned socialist mayoral candidate, and there in that food court, the seeds of everything that was Bernie were sown. Dan, uniquely placed to bring a deep insider's perspective, knew all the players: the conservative French-Canadian Catholics whose great grandparents had worked in the mills (his own); the puppeteers and hippies and NYC transplants looking for land and "authenticity" in Vermont; the developers involved in the era's Robert Moses urban-renewal schemes; the corrupt old-school Dems at their table in the local dive; and even Ben and Jerry who became Ben and Jerry's right there in town. They all made up the mosh pit of the Burlington that Bernie captivated, running on the slogan "Burlington is not for sale," to become the modern era's first socialist mayor, intimate with his constituents across workers, cops, lefties, and the little old ladies who organized their streets; he also boasted a foreign policy, a sudden national profile, and a bullhorn to speak to Ronald Reagan. In the tradition of J. Anthony Lukas's Common Ground and the documentary films of Frederick Wiseman, this epic of American city life delves into the gossip--and the exhilaration--around Bernie's unlikely rise, as we watch an American place transformed one diner coffee, one neighborhood door-knock at a time. Full of Sanders himself, reflecting and raging, hitting his themes, forging alliances with all comers, this is a mesmerizing portrait of a politician, a place, and a movement that would change America"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

The story of Bernie Sanders's quixotic but inexorable rise is told by a son of Burlington on a broad and vivid canvas, depicting the shaping of a people's politics, as he tracks a political signal that traveled from the hard-luck neighborhoods, general stores, traditional businesses, and county fairs to the Town Meetings and the ballot boxes of the last century, predicting much of what has happened to our nation writ large since then.

This utterly captivating symphonic story of city, a visionary, and the way our politics changed forever is told through the very specific people of Burlington, beginning with Dan Chiasson's own mall-punk friends of the 1980s: in a video that would go viral decades later in 2020, they engaged with the itinerant carpenter turned socialist mayor, and there in that food court, the seeds of everything that was Bernie were sown. Dan, uniquely placed to bring a deep insider's perspective, knew all the players: the conservative French-Canadian Catholics whose great grandparents had worked in the mills (his own); the puppeteers and hippies and NYC transplants looking for land and "authenticity" in Vermont; the developers involved in the era's Robert Moses urban-renewal schemes; the corrupt old-school Dems at their table in the local dive; and even Ben and Jerry who became Ben and Jerry's right there in town. They all made up the mosh pit of the Burlington that Bernie captivated, running on the slogan "Burlington is not for sale," to become the modern era's first socialist mayor, intimate with his constituents across workers, cops, lefties, and the little old ladies who organized their streets; he also boasted a foreign policy, a sudden national profile, and a bullhorn to speak to Ronald Reagan.

In the tradition of J. Anthony Lukas's Common Ground and the documentary films of Frederick Wiseman, this epic of American city life delves into the gossip--and the exhilaration--around Bernie's unlikely rise, as we watch an American place transformed one diner coffee, one neighborhood door-knock at a time.

Full of Sanders himself, reflecting and raging, hitting his themes, forging alliances with all comers, this is a mesmerizing portrait of a politician, a place, and a movement that would change America.

Review Quotes

"Story-telling has various eternal wellsprings: history and gossip, the local and the epic, jokes and legends. Bernie for Burlington orchestrates energy from all of the above in a wild variety of stories, voices and characters. At the center, Bernie Sanders of Brooklyn and Burlington is an important and unlikely hero, and Dan Chiasson of Burlington and American poetry is a masterful and unlikely narrator." --Robert Pinsky

"This is a book we need right now--a big, lovingly-woven, Whitmanesque wickerwork of grievances and glories, home truths and triumphs, about a Brooklyn kid and the city on the shore of Lake Champlain where he shaped his compassionate cause. Read it and you'll never think about local politics the same way again." --Nicholson Baker

About the Author

DAN CHIASSON is the author of five books of poetry, including Bicentennial (2014) and The Math Campers (2020), and a book of literary criticism. A longtime contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, Chiasson is the Lorraine Chao Wang Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at Wellesley College.