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A Resistance History of the United States
A bold new understanding of how resistance has shaped American history--told through episodes from America's past that illustrate resistance principles we can use to change our world today.
The United States was shaped by resistance--but not in the way we've been taught. The Revolution did not secure liberty; it opened the door to either liberty or oppression, where only white men enjoyed all of the benefits and protections of citizenship.
In A Resistance History of the United States, public historian Tad Stoermer shows how from the very beginning, that tension--between the ideals of resistance and the realities of power--has defined America more than the Enlightenment ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Utililizing powerful storytelling to focus on key--and often lesser-known--moments in American history, this book reveals the truth of how resistance movements from Colonial times have opposed the powers that be. Stoermer covers an impressive roster of pivotal movements, including:
• Bacon's Rebellion/Metacomet's War (1676)
• Witch Trials (1692)
• The Black Loyalists (1783)
• The Underground Railroad (1850)
Through these and many more examples, Stoermer dismantles the mythologies that pass for American history--exposing the curated nostalgia, moral evasions, and institutional silences that have long protected abusive power. What emerges is an essential look at how we can take lessons from the past to understand, and effectively respond to, the injustices we face today.
The United States was shaped by resistance--but not in the way we've been taught. The Revolution did not secure liberty; it opened the door to either liberty or oppression, where only white men enjoyed all of the benefits and protections of citizenship.
In A Resistance History of the United States, public historian Tad Stoermer shows how from the very beginning, that tension--between the ideals of resistance and the realities of power--has defined America more than the Enlightenment ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Utililizing powerful storytelling to focus on key--and often lesser-known--moments in American history, this book reveals the truth of how resistance movements from Colonial times have opposed the powers that be. Stoermer covers an impressive roster of pivotal movements, including:
• Bacon's Rebellion/Metacomet's War (1676)
• Witch Trials (1692)
• The Black Loyalists (1783)
• The Underground Railroad (1850)
Through these and many more examples, Stoermer dismantles the mythologies that pass for American history--exposing the curated nostalgia, moral evasions, and institutional silences that have long protected abusive power. What emerges is an essential look at how we can take lessons from the past to understand, and effectively respond to, the injustices we face today.
368 pages, Paperback
First published June 2, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 85 reviews
July 19, 2026
25 June 2026:
My criticisms of A Resistance History of the United States are legion, but I’ll lead with the most salient: I strongly suspect that Stoermer used generative AI to produce at least large swaths of this book.
I didn’t arrive at this conclusion lightly; I’d read over 35% of the book before I trusted my instinct enough to begin documenting some of the passages I believe feature AI “tells.” I read hundreds of books a year (95 so far in 2026 alone) and have throughout my life; many of those books are contemporary nonfiction and contemporary literary fiction, so I’m familiar with a wide range of modern writing styles. No other published book has triggered this suspicion in me.
Throughout, the text evidences so many hallmark AI “tells”: overwhelmingly rampant contrastive negation (e.g., “That’s not x, it’s y,” where the “it’s not…” often isn’t even something one would reasonably infer based on the preceding sentence or paragraph); repetitive and unnecessary little summaries every page or so that often bely the complexities of the individuals or topics they purport to synopsize; triplet lists; wildly excessive and often bizarre em dash use (N.B.: I love the em dash and use it often myself; this reading experience is actually the first time I’ve understood why it’s become associated with AI “writing”); bland, sterile, unnaturally homogenous tone; formulaic structuring; short, often one-word “sentences” (fragments); endless missing antecedents; restatements of the same assertions using nearly identical words and phrases; etc.
I encourage readers of this review to peruse the highlights I’ve shared for some examples of the patterns I’m charting and to arrive at their own judgments. (My shared highlights represent only a fraction of the genAI language with which this book is overrun.)
Is it possible that Stoermer has simply consumed so much AI slop that he’s absorbed its linguistic tics to the extent that they’ve subsumed his own writing style? Perhaps, but this man is (I think) in his 40s or 50s. He holds a PhD, an achievement that would have required reading innumerable historical artifacts and scholarly texts spanning from US colonial times to the present. His website indicates that he obtained his PhD before generative AI existed for public consumption, so none of his academic accomplishments could have relied on it. He isn’t from Gen Alpha, someone for whom ChatGPT “writing” might be the only style he’s ever known.
I attempted to locate Stoermer’s scholarly work so I could compare his earlier writing to the writing in this book (with the obvious understanding that a history book written for the general population would differ in style from an article penned for an academic audience), but I was unable to find any such work. Nevertheless, the “evidence” of genAI language (as I personally assess it–I don’t and can’t have proof) is so extensive and so sustained throughout the text that it bears in me the weight of near-certainty.
And what kind of history book doesn’t include a bibliography or even works cited?! Well, probably one assembled by generative AI rather than years of scholarly toil in service of developing and delivering a well-supported thesis. Oh, and–coincidentally?--THIS history book.
I want to be wrong. Steerforth Press, an imprint of Pushkin Press and bearing some sort of Penguin Random House affiliation, published A Resistance History. I don’t want to believe that any publisher would finance and affix its name to a book “written” using generative AI. Unfortunately, my guess is that that’s exactly what happened, and I fear those of us who love reading and the human-crafted language their authors have wrestled onto the page will increasingly find that palpable, sometimes messy humanity absent from new book releases.
Even if my AI evaluation is erroneous, A Resistance History still isn’t a good book. If it’s organic, the writing is simply bad: maddeningly repetitive, sometimes nonsensical, exploding with fragments, marred by logical inconsistency. The text is bloodless except when its author is disparaging other historians (he harbors particular animus for Ken Burns and Jon Meacham).
If AI slop language will invade even entirely human-written work through a sort of gross linguistic osmosis, I’m thankful that books written before 2022 can sustain the rest of my reading life.
Stoermer’s central thesis is twofold: that the founding fathers and their work products have been mythologized in a manner at odds with their actual lives and beliefs, rendering them unworthy of their hallowed status in the American imagination (a largely correct but unoriginal take), and that “the system” (undefined) and the Constitution are currently, in 2026, working exactly as designed / as the founders intended. Neither the Constitution nor A Resistance History supports the latter claim (with regard to the Constitution–I can’t comment on the ambiguous “system” absent a specific meaning the book fails to provide). Yes, the founders intended that the original Constitution’s provisions would apply exclusively to wealthy (land-owning) white men (again, not at all a novel or even contested interpretation). However, Stoermer’s sweeping and unsupported assertion collapses because it cannot bear the weight of the the separation of powers clearly delineated in the source text. It’s frankly absurd to suggest that the Constitution’s authors would look approvingly on a United States in which the executive branch has fully usurped the legislative branch and partially captured the judicial branch, and that’s the state in which we find ourselves upon this book’s publication.
The book does not in fact present a history of the US; its last chapter centers around 1865, and its conclusion makes only fleeting references to eras since, which are of course abundant with resistance movements that warrant more than a superficial sentence or paragraph (if any mention at all) each.
(Stoermer dismisses movements like the 2017 Women’s March, the 2020 George Floyd protests, and efforts during Trump’s second term as achieving “no structural transformation” because they didn’t compel Constitutional amendments, and he devotes little to no space to civil rights, labor, LGBTQIA+, climate, etc. movements. In fact, he asserts that the last victory that mattered was the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.)
Because of the profligate filler language and overuse of repetition, even the history Stoermer does cover is ultimately quite thin.
Stoermer argues that only Constitutional amendments can secure real change, then a few pages later acknowledges that “the Supreme Court gutted the Fourteenth Amendment.” He claims that the Equal Rights Amendment and other protections that should have been constitutionally codified didn’t become law because Americans see the Constitution as perfect and inviolable and would revolt against amending it, which simply isn’t true. He attempts to dethrone one group of white men (the founding fathers) by centering other groups of mostly white men; even Stoermer’s hasty treatment of historical episodes featuring indigenous, Black, and female Americans’ resistance ends up focusing more on the white men peripheral to minorities’ sacrifices. Stoermer’s reverence for Thoreau, who seems more than any other person to embody the author’s vision of efficacious resistance, strikes me as odd: certainly Thoreau took real risks in service of his anti-slavery beliefs, but–apart from that single night in jail–he didn’t have to sacrifice even his comforts for the cause, whereas many others gave their lives. (Unsurprisingly, Stoermer makes no reference to the uncredited female labor that enabled those comforts or Thoreau’s part in perpetuating the very patriarchal and individualistic ideals that made resistance both necessary and so difficult to mount!)
I also can’t help but ask whether Stoermer himself has learned the lesson he aims to impart.
Stoermer tells his readers that breaking the pattern of impotent resistance “would require abandoning liberal nationalism’s faith that the system saves itself, that appeals to founding principles persuade authority to reform, that working within permitted channels produces transformation, that speeches matter.” The author repeatedly condemns nonviolent resistance that he sees as working within established systems of power as ineffective “moral suasion.” He seems to argue that violence is often necessary: “When all peaceful avenues have been closed and authority is already deploying violence systematically, resistance needs people who can accept what stopping that authority actually requires. Not philosophically justify violence, but accept that nothing is off the table when the choice is between making authority stop or accepting that it will continue.” When in our lifetimes have those conditions been more present than now, in 2026? Never. What is Stoermer, with all his straight, wealthy, white male privilege doing? Profiting from a book of moral suasion that merely “philosophically justif[ies] violence”; teaching “public history” as a lecturer in the Museum Studies MA program at an emblematically establishment institution where tuition costs $52,900-$53,000; and earning income from videos posted to Larry Ellison’s TikTok.
If speeches–words–don’t matter (and, to be clear, I do not myself concede that premise), what use is this book meant to serve? Whom does Stoermer expect to mount the type of resistance for which he calls, resistance he’d consider adequate? Clearly not himself.
In my view, this book is guilty of that with which Stoermer (or his AI tool of choice) charges what he calls liberal nationalist history: it’s “rhetoric that sounds profound until you ask what it means. It doesn’t say anything. It just asserts.”
21 June 2026:
Y'all, I'm at least 90% convinced this book was written by generative AI.
My criticisms of A Resistance History of the United States are legion, but I’ll lead with the most salient: I strongly suspect that Stoermer used generative AI to produce at least large swaths of this book.
I didn’t arrive at this conclusion lightly; I’d read over 35% of the book before I trusted my instinct enough to begin documenting some of the passages I believe feature AI “tells.” I read hundreds of books a year (95 so far in 2026 alone) and have throughout my life; many of those books are contemporary nonfiction and contemporary literary fiction, so I’m familiar with a wide range of modern writing styles. No other published book has triggered this suspicion in me.
Throughout, the text evidences so many hallmark AI “tells”: overwhelmingly rampant contrastive negation (e.g., “That’s not x, it’s y,” where the “it’s not…” often isn’t even something one would reasonably infer based on the preceding sentence or paragraph); repetitive and unnecessary little summaries every page or so that often bely the complexities of the individuals or topics they purport to synopsize; triplet lists; wildly excessive and often bizarre em dash use (N.B.: I love the em dash and use it often myself; this reading experience is actually the first time I’ve understood why it’s become associated with AI “writing”); bland, sterile, unnaturally homogenous tone; formulaic structuring; short, often one-word “sentences” (fragments); endless missing antecedents; restatements of the same assertions using nearly identical words and phrases; etc.
I encourage readers of this review to peruse the highlights I’ve shared for some examples of the patterns I’m charting and to arrive at their own judgments. (My shared highlights represent only a fraction of the genAI language with which this book is overrun.)
Is it possible that Stoermer has simply consumed so much AI slop that he’s absorbed its linguistic tics to the extent that they’ve subsumed his own writing style? Perhaps, but this man is (I think) in his 40s or 50s. He holds a PhD, an achievement that would have required reading innumerable historical artifacts and scholarly texts spanning from US colonial times to the present. His website indicates that he obtained his PhD before generative AI existed for public consumption, so none of his academic accomplishments could have relied on it. He isn’t from Gen Alpha, someone for whom ChatGPT “writing” might be the only style he’s ever known.
I attempted to locate Stoermer’s scholarly work so I could compare his earlier writing to the writing in this book (with the obvious understanding that a history book written for the general population would differ in style from an article penned for an academic audience), but I was unable to find any such work. Nevertheless, the “evidence” of genAI language (as I personally assess it–I don’t and can’t have proof) is so extensive and so sustained throughout the text that it bears in me the weight of near-certainty.
And what kind of history book doesn’t include a bibliography or even works cited?! Well, probably one assembled by generative AI rather than years of scholarly toil in service of developing and delivering a well-supported thesis. Oh, and–coincidentally?--THIS history book.
I want to be wrong. Steerforth Press, an imprint of Pushkin Press and bearing some sort of Penguin Random House affiliation, published A Resistance History. I don’t want to believe that any publisher would finance and affix its name to a book “written” using generative AI. Unfortunately, my guess is that that’s exactly what happened, and I fear those of us who love reading and the human-crafted language their authors have wrestled onto the page will increasingly find that palpable, sometimes messy humanity absent from new book releases.
Even if my AI evaluation is erroneous, A Resistance History still isn’t a good book. If it’s organic, the writing is simply bad: maddeningly repetitive, sometimes nonsensical, exploding with fragments, marred by logical inconsistency. The text is bloodless except when its author is disparaging other historians (he harbors particular animus for Ken Burns and Jon Meacham).
If AI slop language will invade even entirely human-written work through a sort of gross linguistic osmosis, I’m thankful that books written before 2022 can sustain the rest of my reading life.
Stoermer’s central thesis is twofold: that the founding fathers and their work products have been mythologized in a manner at odds with their actual lives and beliefs, rendering them unworthy of their hallowed status in the American imagination (a largely correct but unoriginal take), and that “the system” (undefined) and the Constitution are currently, in 2026, working exactly as designed / as the founders intended. Neither the Constitution nor A Resistance History supports the latter claim (with regard to the Constitution–I can’t comment on the ambiguous “system” absent a specific meaning the book fails to provide). Yes, the founders intended that the original Constitution’s provisions would apply exclusively to wealthy (land-owning) white men (again, not at all a novel or even contested interpretation). However, Stoermer’s sweeping and unsupported assertion collapses because it cannot bear the weight of the the separation of powers clearly delineated in the source text. It’s frankly absurd to suggest that the Constitution’s authors would look approvingly on a United States in which the executive branch has fully usurped the legislative branch and partially captured the judicial branch, and that’s the state in which we find ourselves upon this book’s publication.
The book does not in fact present a history of the US; its last chapter centers around 1865, and its conclusion makes only fleeting references to eras since, which are of course abundant with resistance movements that warrant more than a superficial sentence or paragraph (if any mention at all) each.
(Stoermer dismisses movements like the 2017 Women’s March, the 2020 George Floyd protests, and efforts during Trump’s second term as achieving “no structural transformation” because they didn’t compel Constitutional amendments, and he devotes little to no space to civil rights, labor, LGBTQIA+, climate, etc. movements. In fact, he asserts that the last victory that mattered was the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.)
Because of the profligate filler language and overuse of repetition, even the history Stoermer does cover is ultimately quite thin.
Stoermer argues that only Constitutional amendments can secure real change, then a few pages later acknowledges that “the Supreme Court gutted the Fourteenth Amendment.” He claims that the Equal Rights Amendment and other protections that should have been constitutionally codified didn’t become law because Americans see the Constitution as perfect and inviolable and would revolt against amending it, which simply isn’t true. He attempts to dethrone one group of white men (the founding fathers) by centering other groups of mostly white men; even Stoermer’s hasty treatment of historical episodes featuring indigenous, Black, and female Americans’ resistance ends up focusing more on the white men peripheral to minorities’ sacrifices. Stoermer’s reverence for Thoreau, who seems more than any other person to embody the author’s vision of efficacious resistance, strikes me as odd: certainly Thoreau took real risks in service of his anti-slavery beliefs, but–apart from that single night in jail–he didn’t have to sacrifice even his comforts for the cause, whereas many others gave their lives. (Unsurprisingly, Stoermer makes no reference to the uncredited female labor that enabled those comforts or Thoreau’s part in perpetuating the very patriarchal and individualistic ideals that made resistance both necessary and so difficult to mount!)
I also can’t help but ask whether Stoermer himself has learned the lesson he aims to impart.
Stoermer tells his readers that breaking the pattern of impotent resistance “would require abandoning liberal nationalism’s faith that the system saves itself, that appeals to founding principles persuade authority to reform, that working within permitted channels produces transformation, that speeches matter.” The author repeatedly condemns nonviolent resistance that he sees as working within established systems of power as ineffective “moral suasion.” He seems to argue that violence is often necessary: “When all peaceful avenues have been closed and authority is already deploying violence systematically, resistance needs people who can accept what stopping that authority actually requires. Not philosophically justify violence, but accept that nothing is off the table when the choice is between making authority stop or accepting that it will continue.” When in our lifetimes have those conditions been more present than now, in 2026? Never. What is Stoermer, with all his straight, wealthy, white male privilege doing? Profiting from a book of moral suasion that merely “philosophically justif[ies] violence”; teaching “public history” as a lecturer in the Museum Studies MA program at an emblematically establishment institution where tuition costs $52,900-$53,000; and earning income from videos posted to Larry Ellison’s TikTok.
If speeches–words–don’t matter (and, to be clear, I do not myself concede that premise), what use is this book meant to serve? Whom does Stoermer expect to mount the type of resistance for which he calls, resistance he’d consider adequate? Clearly not himself.
In my view, this book is guilty of that with which Stoermer (or his AI tool of choice) charges what he calls liberal nationalist history: it’s “rhetoric that sounds profound until you ask what it means. It doesn’t say anything. It just asserts.”
21 June 2026:
Y'all, I'm at least 90% convinced this book was written by generative AI.
July 4, 2026
I took one star off because Stoermer did not list any footnotes or citations. As a historian, he knows very well that these things are required. Otherwise, what is to stop him making things up to suit his narrative?
Other than that, I can find no fault with the book. It refers to many things about which I knew a bit, but it added so much more to the topics. He begins with the premise that what he calls the First Republic began with the ratification of the Constitution began the first republic. But the resistance history of the country began before that. Madison's constitution contained no Bill of Rights and he saw no need for one, believing that to add a specific bill of rights might make rights not mentioned, assumed not to be included. But there were those (the anti-Federalists) who refused to pass it until the rights were added. The author also took exception to the fact that the document was written in secret. It wasn't until it was clear that without a bill of rights, the Constitution would not be ratified. Just how right the anti-Federalists were became clear over time when most arguments that came before the Supreme Court had to do with the first ten amendments. This is seen as a victory for resistance.
But in Stoermer's view (and in the view of others), the Constitution was written by elites, for elites. Slavery, even though the word is not mentioned in the original text, is protected through a few of the provisions and slave owners were even given more electoral power. He cites cases like Nancy Dixon, an enslaved woman who ran away to the British side during the War for Independence, because they promised freedom to any enslaved person. She resisted and won her freedom. Ona Judge, the personal slave of Martha Washington also ran away in an act of resistance. George Washington hunted her to the day he died and even after Martha's death, she was always very careful because she knew that the Custis family could take her and return her to slavery. She told her story in 1842, not long before her death. Even though she was widowed at a young age with children and lived out her life in poverty, she was free.
The book covers several instances of resistance, some successful, some not. The book focuses a good bit of time on John Brown and the attack on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry. He documents the six men who financed him, provided him with armaments, but most of whom did not fight with him on the day. The point that Stoermer makes about this incident is that Brown himself recognized that slavery was wrong and was determined to do his part to end it, accepting the consequences. The others who gave him financial assistance understood the righteousness of his cause but could not bring themselves to cross the line when it came to violence.
The book includes a kind of handbook for resistance, explaining that when all peaceful means have failed, to be successful, one must be willing to take the last step- using violence to achieve the ends, accepting that death might be the result.
The Second Republic began with the Reconstruction Amendments (the 13th, 14th, and 15th), especially the 14th, which was almost a mini-constitution in and of itself. The rights in the Constitution now extended to the states, and they brought about structural changes. Unfortunately, the Second Republic ended with the death of Reconstruction in 1877. The Supreme Court gutted the rights accorded in the Amendments, but they were still there, waiting to be rediscovered a century later. He ends the book by talking briefly about the present. He refers to the insurrection on Jan 6 and faults Biden for not calling for structural change to prevent the same thing from happening again. He also makes reference to the Supreme Court of late which has been overturning legislation passed over the past 50 years. The laws he talks about were good laws but it is much easier to overturn laws than it is to throw out Constitutional Amendments.
The book is a fascinating study of something that has rarely been addressed in our country. For Stoermer, we have not been willing to grab the opportunities that have arisen, and instead accepting reform as permanent when they could never be permanent. In the case of the Civil War Amendments, he argues that the Radical Republicans understood that they had an opportunity to make necessary change but knew that the window that opened was small and that they had to act quickly.
I am not certain about all of his conclusions, but I realize that it might have to do with my age. If I had read this book at age 20, I would have been willing to engage in battle on the streets, but I now feel that it might be too much for me. That said, I do believe that just about every peaceful solution has been tried to turn around the turn toward autocracy and fascism our country has taken. We are truly leaving our prodigy with a very heavy load to bear.
Other than that, I can find no fault with the book. It refers to many things about which I knew a bit, but it added so much more to the topics. He begins with the premise that what he calls the First Republic began with the ratification of the Constitution began the first republic. But the resistance history of the country began before that. Madison's constitution contained no Bill of Rights and he saw no need for one, believing that to add a specific bill of rights might make rights not mentioned, assumed not to be included. But there were those (the anti-Federalists) who refused to pass it until the rights were added. The author also took exception to the fact that the document was written in secret. It wasn't until it was clear that without a bill of rights, the Constitution would not be ratified. Just how right the anti-Federalists were became clear over time when most arguments that came before the Supreme Court had to do with the first ten amendments. This is seen as a victory for resistance.
But in Stoermer's view (and in the view of others), the Constitution was written by elites, for elites. Slavery, even though the word is not mentioned in the original text, is protected through a few of the provisions and slave owners were even given more electoral power. He cites cases like Nancy Dixon, an enslaved woman who ran away to the British side during the War for Independence, because they promised freedom to any enslaved person. She resisted and won her freedom. Ona Judge, the personal slave of Martha Washington also ran away in an act of resistance. George Washington hunted her to the day he died and even after Martha's death, she was always very careful because she knew that the Custis family could take her and return her to slavery. She told her story in 1842, not long before her death. Even though she was widowed at a young age with children and lived out her life in poverty, she was free.
The book covers several instances of resistance, some successful, some not. The book focuses a good bit of time on John Brown and the attack on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry. He documents the six men who financed him, provided him with armaments, but most of whom did not fight with him on the day. The point that Stoermer makes about this incident is that Brown himself recognized that slavery was wrong and was determined to do his part to end it, accepting the consequences. The others who gave him financial assistance understood the righteousness of his cause but could not bring themselves to cross the line when it came to violence.
The book includes a kind of handbook for resistance, explaining that when all peaceful means have failed, to be successful, one must be willing to take the last step- using violence to achieve the ends, accepting that death might be the result.
The Second Republic began with the Reconstruction Amendments (the 13th, 14th, and 15th), especially the 14th, which was almost a mini-constitution in and of itself. The rights in the Constitution now extended to the states, and they brought about structural changes. Unfortunately, the Second Republic ended with the death of Reconstruction in 1877. The Supreme Court gutted the rights accorded in the Amendments, but they were still there, waiting to be rediscovered a century later. He ends the book by talking briefly about the present. He refers to the insurrection on Jan 6 and faults Biden for not calling for structural change to prevent the same thing from happening again. He also makes reference to the Supreme Court of late which has been overturning legislation passed over the past 50 years. The laws he talks about were good laws but it is much easier to overturn laws than it is to throw out Constitutional Amendments.
The book is a fascinating study of something that has rarely been addressed in our country. For Stoermer, we have not been willing to grab the opportunities that have arisen, and instead accepting reform as permanent when they could never be permanent. In the case of the Civil War Amendments, he argues that the Radical Republicans understood that they had an opportunity to make necessary change but knew that the window that opened was small and that they had to act quickly.
I am not certain about all of his conclusions, but I realize that it might have to do with my age. If I had read this book at age 20, I would have been willing to engage in battle on the streets, but I now feel that it might be too much for me. That said, I do believe that just about every peaceful solution has been tried to turn around the turn toward autocracy and fascism our country has taken. We are truly leaving our prodigy with a very heavy load to bear.
June 9, 2026
5 stars
If I could give this book six stars I would. I did not rate this book five stars because it was entertaining or for fun facts, but because of the important events included and while some seem small and even irrelevant at the time, but how the author used them to iterate what the United States was built on a foundation of morals and values for the people and how resistance and fighting corruptions of government was what our country was founded on. Some stories included may seem small while others have great sacrifice, but all play a part in history. While that was all fascinating and impactful in itself, how it relates to the current social, political and economic climate is just as equally as important. I think that individuals who are looking for information, politics, history, and are concerned with our current and previous administrations would benefit from reading this book. Not only does it remind and inform us of the past but how it relates to our present. The writing was nicely paced, easy to follow without feeling like info dumped on. I highly recommend
I received an advanced ebook, via Netagelly. This review is my own honest opinion.
July 2, 2026
AI written and insulting. Can't get past page 9 without feeling ripped off. If there's a good message in there, I can't bear to get to it.
Did Not Finish
April 2, 2026DNF. This felt more like an academic paper than anything else. I didn't get far. 🤷♀️
June 20, 2026
Eén ster eraf omdat er geen voet- of eindnoten zijn, geen bibliografie, geen 'further reading' of iets dergelijks. Het mag dan wel een boek zijn die voor een breed publiek geschreven is, maar het moet ook controleerbaar zijn.
Overigens een fantastisch boek waar ik ontzettend veel van geleerd heb, en natuurlijk ongelooflijk relevant voor nu. Leest heel vlot en zet de lezer actief tot nadenken - een absolute aanrader.
De grootste inhoudelijke spanning die ik had opgemerkt is de eeuwige discussie tussen reform en revolutie in de laatste twee hoofdstukken. In het één na laatste hoofdstuk over John Brown's aanval op Harper's Ferry werd er een héél duidelijk onderscheid gemaakt tussen de 'puren' - John Brown en the Six (en zelfs dan eigenlijk alleen maar twee leden van die Six) - en de rest die als moreel laf worden neergezet omdat ze niet genoeg steun aan John Brown gaven. Met name radicale politici als Charles Sumner worden verweten dat zij naïef zijn om te geloven dat de Slavenmacht via het Congres vernietigd kon worden, terwijl het hele systeem tot de bot verrot was en reform niet mogelijk was. Dat is tot op zekere hoogte ook allemaal waar: het probleem is dat de auteur hier niet consequent mee is. Terwijl de Radicalen in dit hoofdstuk worden weggezet als de belichaming van de beperkingen van reform, worden zij in het laatste hoofdstuk neergezet als de revolutionairen van het eerste uur die strijd leverden om het gehele Amerikaanse stelsel te transformeren - wat vervolgens tot een overwinning voor revolutie in plaats van reform wordt gerekend. Het moment was weliswaar revolutionair, maar de Radicalen waren nog steeds hervormers, ook toen ze soms buiten de wettelijke normen om hun hervorming doorpushten. Het komt neer op een miskenning en selectieve viering van grote hervormingsfiguren als Charles Sumner en Thaddeus Stevens vanuit de kant van revolutie - waar op zichzelf niets verkeerd mee is, mits het consequent wordt gedaan. Het heeft weinig zin om te waarschuwen voor het eeuwig lang wachten op ideologisch-pure bondgenoten waardoor niets uit de grond komt, en tegelijkertijd de bondgenoten die er wél zijn (Frederick Douglass, Sumner) bekritiseren omdat ze niet puur genoeg zijn. Dat creëert een onnodige en onproductieve - en vooral een frustrerende - breuk tussen grofweg "revo' s" en "refo's" met het risico op een averrechts effect, namelijk ontmoediging (uiteraard is dit altijd afhankelijk van de situatie; soms kan zo'n breuk terecht zijn als de verschillen onherenigbaar groot zijn). Toen de tijd aankwam, waren revo's uiteindelijk afhankelijk van refo's om de structurele hervormingen door te voeren tijdens Reconstructie. Punt is, je hebt altijd bondgenoten "on the inside" nodig en de drammers "on the outside", en het liefst werken ze nauw samen - zoals ze deden tijdens de Radicale Reconstructie. Het kan zeker het geval zijn dat ik hierin tekort kom aan kennis over het debat (in welk geval ik graag gecorrigeerd wil worden), maar naar mijn inzien zou het niet primair moeten gaan over of-of, maar en-en.
Tl;dr, lees dit boek!!!
Overigens een fantastisch boek waar ik ontzettend veel van geleerd heb, en natuurlijk ongelooflijk relevant voor nu. Leest heel vlot en zet de lezer actief tot nadenken - een absolute aanrader.
De grootste inhoudelijke spanning die ik had opgemerkt is de eeuwige discussie tussen reform en revolutie in de laatste twee hoofdstukken. In het één na laatste hoofdstuk over John Brown's aanval op Harper's Ferry werd er een héél duidelijk onderscheid gemaakt tussen de 'puren' - John Brown en the Six (en zelfs dan eigenlijk alleen maar twee leden van die Six) - en de rest die als moreel laf worden neergezet omdat ze niet genoeg steun aan John Brown gaven. Met name radicale politici als Charles Sumner worden verweten dat zij naïef zijn om te geloven dat de Slavenmacht via het Congres vernietigd kon worden, terwijl het hele systeem tot de bot verrot was en reform niet mogelijk was. Dat is tot op zekere hoogte ook allemaal waar: het probleem is dat de auteur hier niet consequent mee is. Terwijl de Radicalen in dit hoofdstuk worden weggezet als de belichaming van de beperkingen van reform, worden zij in het laatste hoofdstuk neergezet als de revolutionairen van het eerste uur die strijd leverden om het gehele Amerikaanse stelsel te transformeren - wat vervolgens tot een overwinning voor revolutie in plaats van reform wordt gerekend. Het moment was weliswaar revolutionair, maar de Radicalen waren nog steeds hervormers, ook toen ze soms buiten de wettelijke normen om hun hervorming doorpushten. Het komt neer op een miskenning en selectieve viering van grote hervormingsfiguren als Charles Sumner en Thaddeus Stevens vanuit de kant van revolutie - waar op zichzelf niets verkeerd mee is, mits het consequent wordt gedaan. Het heeft weinig zin om te waarschuwen voor het eeuwig lang wachten op ideologisch-pure bondgenoten waardoor niets uit de grond komt, en tegelijkertijd de bondgenoten die er wél zijn (Frederick Douglass, Sumner) bekritiseren omdat ze niet puur genoeg zijn. Dat creëert een onnodige en onproductieve - en vooral een frustrerende - breuk tussen grofweg "revo' s" en "refo's" met het risico op een averrechts effect, namelijk ontmoediging (uiteraard is dit altijd afhankelijk van de situatie; soms kan zo'n breuk terecht zijn als de verschillen onherenigbaar groot zijn). Toen de tijd aankwam, waren revo's uiteindelijk afhankelijk van refo's om de structurele hervormingen door te voeren tijdens Reconstructie. Punt is, je hebt altijd bondgenoten "on the inside" nodig en de drammers "on the outside", en het liefst werken ze nauw samen - zoals ze deden tijdens de Radicale Reconstructie. Het kan zeker het geval zijn dat ik hierin tekort kom aan kennis over het debat (in welk geval ik graag gecorrigeerd wil worden), maar naar mijn inzien zou het niet primair moeten gaan over of-of, maar en-en.
Tl;dr, lees dit boek!!!
Did Not Finish
July 1, 2026Struggling to get into this. I don’t think I like the writing style or something. I feel like he’s not connecting the dots he said he’d connect in the author’s note/intro.
June 25, 2026
I’ve been waiting months to read this book and was glad when I got my copy the day it came out. Tad does a great job of telling history without it sounding dry. I loved learning about Thaddeus Steven’s and the Six who were involved in John Browns rebellion (also, I feel the need to say “Ona Judge” from now on when anyone starts invoking Washington’s name with reverence). The constitution was not created to give us full freedom and liberties, it was created to maintain the status quo, to protect slavery, to cushion institutions that resistance efforts tried to shock. I’m listening to “Born Equal” simultaneously to reading this book and it has been wild to learn about enslaved people counting as 3/5 (I was taught that it was immoral that they were counted as a partial soul, but the real reason why the enslaved were 3/5 a person was so that slave owners could count enslaved as people on ballots who never got to vote. To think that John Adams could’ve had a second term and beat Jefferson (who won because of the vast amounts of enslaved people included on the voter roll) is mind boggling).
June 18, 2026
I love reading a book that puts our current shared experiences into context.
When I look at the US, the liberal “opposition” and the constant appeals to the constitution and founders, it feels like I’m being sold beachfront property in Arizona. Something just isn’t right and we’re being duped. This book explains that.
I’m big on bashing American exceptionalism and our founding mythology. That being said, there was legitimate resistance to abusive authority that sparked the revolution. Unfortunately, that revolutionary energy was co-opted by wealthy Southern enslavers and used to distort the initial ideas of liberty.
The constitution was written to protect the white, “property”-owning male minority from the majority, effectively nullifying participatory democracy. The current admin is simply reinstating that hierarchy. Our system is built on a rotten foundation, which will only continue to rot unless forced to change.
Without touching on Marxism or economic alternatives (socialism, communism, etc), the author does a great job of applying historical materialism to American history. Those that preach and revere the ideals of liberty, freedom, and patriotism without changing the system are putting lipstick on a pig (Biden, Obama, Clinton to name a few).
Walked away from this more interested in US history and more secure in my distaste for our system. Shoutout the Black loyalists, John Brown, Metacomet, and Ona Judge.
When I look at the US, the liberal “opposition” and the constant appeals to the constitution and founders, it feels like I’m being sold beachfront property in Arizona. Something just isn’t right and we’re being duped. This book explains that.
I’m big on bashing American exceptionalism and our founding mythology. That being said, there was legitimate resistance to abusive authority that sparked the revolution. Unfortunately, that revolutionary energy was co-opted by wealthy Southern enslavers and used to distort the initial ideas of liberty.
The constitution was written to protect the white, “property”-owning male minority from the majority, effectively nullifying participatory democracy. The current admin is simply reinstating that hierarchy. Our system is built on a rotten foundation, which will only continue to rot unless forced to change.
Without touching on Marxism or economic alternatives (socialism, communism, etc), the author does a great job of applying historical materialism to American history. Those that preach and revere the ideals of liberty, freedom, and patriotism without changing the system are putting lipstick on a pig (Biden, Obama, Clinton to name a few).
Walked away from this more interested in US history and more secure in my distaste for our system. Shoutout the Black loyalists, John Brown, Metacomet, and Ona Judge.
July 13, 2026
This felt very surface level and it lacks references to source material. This is odd considering the author is a professor. I wanted more from the stories of resistance; this was very lacking.
June 18, 2026
Excellent! Like a whole US history specialty semester (maybe 2?) in a book. Professor Stoermer narrates the audiobook...so even more, you feel as if you're sitting in his classroom. Stories upon stories not commonly taught in US classrooms with loads of examples and explanations of resistance that hooks you early and keeps you late.
"...when the student is ready, the teacher appears." Perfect timing, I think.
"...when the student is ready, the teacher appears." Perfect timing, I think.
July 10, 2026
Listening to nonfiction on audio is my favorite because it sounds more like a podcast than anything. Some people find nonfiction, particularly history, to be dry, but opting for the audio version really changes that up. Tad Stoermer is both the author and audiobook narrator, which gives this that podcast feel.
He is clear at the start of this book that it’s not an instruction manual, but rather a close look at key moments of resistance in history that helped to shape our nation.
Awesome and just in time for America’s 250th!
He is clear at the start of this book that it’s not an instruction manual, but rather a close look at key moments of resistance in history that helped to shape our nation.
Awesome and just in time for America’s 250th!
Read
July 30, 2026The book was difficult to read , but it was very instructional. It opened my eyes to the falsehoods I was taught about our country’s history. Also, I saw many of the same patterns happening now in our country
August 1, 2026
Well researched & well written. It contains history that is necessary for us to know, but is overlooked. The message comes across clear- our democracy has to be fought for, over & over again. It is not inherited.
June 22, 2026
repetitive and exhausting w/ the rhetorically-meandering pace of each story. get to the Fn point and move tf on, damn.... But the info is clutch, worth the effort to stay engaged
July 29, 2026
IMO a more organized version of “People’s History of the United States” but more focused on takeaways than on recounting of events. Makes me want to *** **** * f****ing Flock Camera in my neighborhood.
Read
July 21, 2026Powerful, clear-eyed view of people who resisted abusive authority. Also, quite dense. It makes an argument and gives a call to action. I'm going to have to sit with this one, and will probably reread it. (Having read it just the once has probably put me on some kind of list 🙄)
July 31, 2026
Something was very "off" about the writing in this book. It was proficient enough technically, but on a more macro level it was meandering, repetitive, and irrelevant to its supposed thesis. I found the author prone to hyperbole and reliant on tonally inappropriate sentence fragments and rhetorical flourishes. He didn't cite sources, but he made grand pronouncements about historic events. It also didn't live up to its potential, which is a pity. But again - something was very, very off.
June 3, 2026
As someone who spent the first 20 years of my life in the USA, I realised once I finished school that most of American history was curated to suit a specific narrative. I'm always up for learning the REAL history of the USA and not the polished version published in the Maxwell produced textbooks.
This one is laid out quite well in that he provides a quick introduction and some semblance of hope in the conclusion of the book (if you are worried about where America is currently going).
There's mentions of history that most people know and the stories behind it such as the Salem witch trial, Tea Party, revolutionaries, slave trade, George Washington etc.
It's nice hearing that there were some people back then who tried to prevent the witch trials. Because let's face it - they burned women, not witches.
And boy does this book make me hate George Washington even more. What a complete asshole he is. I wish I could go back to my primary school history class and say something bad about him or spit on his grave at Mt Vernon when all 8th graders had to visit.
The author describes the American way of resistance and as much as I want Americans to be more like the French in their resistance, he does outline some ways that American resistance works.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.
This one is laid out quite well in that he provides a quick introduction and some semblance of hope in the conclusion of the book (if you are worried about where America is currently going).
There's mentions of history that most people know and the stories behind it such as the Salem witch trial, Tea Party, revolutionaries, slave trade, George Washington etc.
It's nice hearing that there were some people back then who tried to prevent the witch trials. Because let's face it - they burned women, not witches.
And boy does this book make me hate George Washington even more. What a complete asshole he is. I wish I could go back to my primary school history class and say something bad about him or spit on his grave at Mt Vernon when all 8th graders had to visit.
The author describes the American way of resistance and as much as I want Americans to be more like the French in their resistance, he does outline some ways that American resistance works.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.
July 4, 2026
GACK.
Full of seemingly mendacious framing, what I'll call lies by omission and more. And, probably all in the nature of grifting at the left edge of BlueAnon.
A few preliminary notes.
First, I follow Stoermer on Substack. (That will be changing, though.) I had not seen anything wrong with what he says, while noting that everything is paywalled and usually the paywall is pretty quick, as in, within 100 words or so. Boy, is the reality different.
Second, I am not sure that I noticed there that is a former staffer to a US Member of Congress. Since we have no third-party members (sit down Bernie Sanders) that means he’s a Democrat, and hence, as a talker about “resistance,” almost surely a member of The Resistance™. His personal website has more. Very “conventional,” even insider-ish on background. Owns two houses per that, and per IMDB, also does time in the Bahamas. Teh Google does not tell me what Congresscritter he worked for; I am curious and “goes to motive, your honor.” Scratch that; he has an older Wordpress, with an about page and it was for Mary Landrieu.
The first section? Rejecting Edmund Morgan’s late 20th century interpretation of Bacon’s Rebellion when many historians both Black and White used that as their framework for criticizing the 1619 Project (my links?) is a bold move — and contrarian. I've discussed, and critiqued, critics of the project and the project itself here. Also, up north, had never before heard the same as Metacomet, rather than Metacom.
The second? Yes, even if Giles Corey didn’t say “more weight,” it was resistance to authority. Stoermer doesn’t even explain why he remained silent, for one thing. He also doesn’t note that 1692 Salem still had a “state church” and that none of the people there had fled for the religious freedom confines of Rhode Island. Salem 1692 has about zero relevance for today, other than to remind people what the First Amendment is all about.
Speaking of? He doesn’t seem to mention the First Amendment here. I don’t know that for sure because there’s no index, always a ding.
Related on the issue of relevance? Per a 3-star reviewer, I bet a lot, a lot of people were expecting events more modern than this. While I doubt a 1-star reviewer’s claim that this is AI, a prescheduled book tour and other events does make it look like Tad Stoermer, like many others, is trying to make a buck off the semiquincentennial.
But, by 100 pages in, I’m figuring this is probably 2-star, and I’m not willing to totally reject the AI idea, and I know that I am not likely to read every word and that I am likely to unfollow him on Substack.
But wait, it gets worse!
Lightly grokked chapter 3. I already know what Somerset is, and contra some of the 1619 Project’s critics, said it DID play a part in the Revolution. Stoermer also ignores that it was a wartime policy, as Britain maintained slavery in the Caribbean until the 1830s, and that Black Americans who fled to Nova Scotia faced degrees of racism there. He also has a subsection, “Why we weren’t told this story,” which implies that “they” hid the story.
Chapter 4? Madison, the man who opposed chaplains in Congress, did not write the Bill of Rights for largely, let alone purely, cynical reasons. In an era where all New England states had state churches, the First Amendment alone was far from cynical. Stoermer also knows, but won’t tell you, that in 1787, the “Virginia Plan” DID want to federalize the constitution.
In the same chapter, we get a WHAT THE FUCK moment. “Zuinglius”? The man commonly known as the Reformed movement reformer “Zwingli”? Nobody spells it in fully Latinized version. It comes off as snooty, when you recognize he's talking about Zwingli, or so it does to me, as if he's trying to shove erudition down your throat. And Stoermer doesn’t tell you that, mixing church and state, he was killed in battle. So, in this chapter, we have multiple lies by omission, and I am thinking he’ll be lucky to be above 1 star.
He also doesn’t tell you that, in 1776, Washington reversed his stance on banning new Black soldiers. Indeed, Blacks were fighting in the Virginia Battalion under Lafayette in 1781.
Patrick Henry as a McResistance model? The man who, unlike Washington, freed ZERO of his slaves at his death? Uh, sure.
If you want an anti-Federalist who took a pass on national office under the Constitution? Why not Sam Adams, who owned zero slaves in the first place?
That said, I’m puzzled otherwise. With this degree of talk about resisting the Constitution, for its flaws, with THIS DEGREE of talk, is Stoermer saying that he thinks the Articles of Confederation were better? Or, is this a chapter for McResistance as cosplay? Neither idea is good, nor palatable.
Chapter 5 on Oney Judge? Washington’s scheme was indeed illegal. I had always before thought the six months were consecutive, but that’s not true. That said, the original 1780 law, and the new in 1788, did not apply to members of Congress. Washington avoided seeking a ruling as to whether executive officials were covered or not.
Chapter 6 on Thoreau? Learned nothing new other than his grandfather resisted patriots in the Boston area and spent a night or two in jail as well.
Chapter 7 on the Underground Railroad and Fugitive Slave Act trials? From a book I recently read, “Freedom Ship,” I know now that, to coin a phrase, more enslaved Blacks freed themselves via The Underwater Submarine than via The Underground Railroad. I had not heard of Chloe Cooley before, or Upper Canada’s 1793 Act Against Slavery. That said. Stoermer oversells it. It’s no different than New York State’s law for gradual emancipation. It did not abolish slavery for any currently enslaved people, it allowed them to be sold within Upper Canada, and back into the US. And, it did nothing to save Cooley. She was taken across the Niagara River and Wiki’s page on her says her fate after that is unknown. (Her page ends by saying New York State’s emancipation act was very similar to that of Upper Canada.) See? Mendaciousness and lies by omission.
And, on history books, having to repeatedly look shit up is guaranteed to piss me off. I skipped the rest of the chapter because I’ve read books about the Underground Railroad as well as “Freedom Ship,” two bios of Charles Sumner and more.
Chapter 8: I’ve read a bio of John Brown, a dual bio of Brown and Lincoln and other material about Brown’s funders. Largely skimmed.
Chapter 9: Reconstruction. Nothing new.
I then have the insight, after seeing no index at the end, but a “Resistance toolkit,” that he’s like the Indivisible dudebros of the first Bernie Sanders campaign. My thoughts about them and their grifting here.
And yes, grifting is the word, and it’s the word I’m ready to use about Stoermer by the 100-page mark.
I mean, think about it. Book officially comes out in June, tour already lined up. (I’m shocked his website doesn’t have a “merch” page.)
A quote from my Indivisible takedown is relevant:
More to come at my blog site.
And, here that crushing is, even more in-depth on Substack than on Blogger.
Full of seemingly mendacious framing, what I'll call lies by omission and more. And, probably all in the nature of grifting at the left edge of BlueAnon.
A few preliminary notes.
First, I follow Stoermer on Substack. (That will be changing, though.) I had not seen anything wrong with what he says, while noting that everything is paywalled and usually the paywall is pretty quick, as in, within 100 words or so. Boy, is the reality different.
Second, I am not sure that I noticed there that is a former staffer to a US Member of Congress. Since we have no third-party members (sit down Bernie Sanders) that means he’s a Democrat, and hence, as a talker about “resistance,” almost surely a member of The Resistance™. His personal website has more. Very “conventional,” even insider-ish on background. Owns two houses per that, and per IMDB, also does time in the Bahamas. Teh Google does not tell me what Congresscritter he worked for; I am curious and “goes to motive, your honor.” Scratch that; he has an older Wordpress, with an about page and it was for Mary Landrieu.
The first section? Rejecting Edmund Morgan’s late 20th century interpretation of Bacon’s Rebellion when many historians both Black and White used that as their framework for criticizing the 1619 Project (my links?) is a bold move — and contrarian. I've discussed, and critiqued, critics of the project and the project itself here. Also, up north, had never before heard the same as Metacomet, rather than Metacom.
The second? Yes, even if Giles Corey didn’t say “more weight,” it was resistance to authority. Stoermer doesn’t even explain why he remained silent, for one thing. He also doesn’t note that 1692 Salem still had a “state church” and that none of the people there had fled for the religious freedom confines of Rhode Island. Salem 1692 has about zero relevance for today, other than to remind people what the First Amendment is all about.
Speaking of? He doesn’t seem to mention the First Amendment here. I don’t know that for sure because there’s no index, always a ding.
Related on the issue of relevance? Per a 3-star reviewer, I bet a lot, a lot of people were expecting events more modern than this. While I doubt a 1-star reviewer’s claim that this is AI, a prescheduled book tour and other events does make it look like Tad Stoermer, like many others, is trying to make a buck off the semiquincentennial.
But, by 100 pages in, I’m figuring this is probably 2-star, and I’m not willing to totally reject the AI idea, and I know that I am not likely to read every word and that I am likely to unfollow him on Substack.
But wait, it gets worse!
Lightly grokked chapter 3. I already know what Somerset is, and contra some of the 1619 Project’s critics, said it DID play a part in the Revolution. Stoermer also ignores that it was a wartime policy, as Britain maintained slavery in the Caribbean until the 1830s, and that Black Americans who fled to Nova Scotia faced degrees of racism there. He also has a subsection, “Why we weren’t told this story,” which implies that “they” hid the story.
Chapter 4? Madison, the man who opposed chaplains in Congress, did not write the Bill of Rights for largely, let alone purely, cynical reasons. In an era where all New England states had state churches, the First Amendment alone was far from cynical. Stoermer also knows, but won’t tell you, that in 1787, the “Virginia Plan” DID want to federalize the constitution.
In the same chapter, we get a WHAT THE FUCK moment. “Zuinglius”? The man commonly known as the Reformed movement reformer “Zwingli”? Nobody spells it in fully Latinized version. It comes off as snooty, when you recognize he's talking about Zwingli, or so it does to me, as if he's trying to shove erudition down your throat. And Stoermer doesn’t tell you that, mixing church and state, he was killed in battle. So, in this chapter, we have multiple lies by omission, and I am thinking he’ll be lucky to be above 1 star.
He also doesn’t tell you that, in 1776, Washington reversed his stance on banning new Black soldiers. Indeed, Blacks were fighting in the Virginia Battalion under Lafayette in 1781.
Patrick Henry as a McResistance model? The man who, unlike Washington, freed ZERO of his slaves at his death? Uh, sure.
If you want an anti-Federalist who took a pass on national office under the Constitution? Why not Sam Adams, who owned zero slaves in the first place?
That said, I’m puzzled otherwise. With this degree of talk about resisting the Constitution, for its flaws, with THIS DEGREE of talk, is Stoermer saying that he thinks the Articles of Confederation were better? Or, is this a chapter for McResistance as cosplay? Neither idea is good, nor palatable.
Chapter 5 on Oney Judge? Washington’s scheme was indeed illegal. I had always before thought the six months were consecutive, but that’s not true. That said, the original 1780 law, and the new in 1788, did not apply to members of Congress. Washington avoided seeking a ruling as to whether executive officials were covered or not.
Chapter 6 on Thoreau? Learned nothing new other than his grandfather resisted patriots in the Boston area and spent a night or two in jail as well.
Chapter 7 on the Underground Railroad and Fugitive Slave Act trials? From a book I recently read, “Freedom Ship,” I know now that, to coin a phrase, more enslaved Blacks freed themselves via The Underwater Submarine than via The Underground Railroad. I had not heard of Chloe Cooley before, or Upper Canada’s 1793 Act Against Slavery. That said. Stoermer oversells it. It’s no different than New York State’s law for gradual emancipation. It did not abolish slavery for any currently enslaved people, it allowed them to be sold within Upper Canada, and back into the US. And, it did nothing to save Cooley. She was taken across the Niagara River and Wiki’s page on her says her fate after that is unknown. (Her page ends by saying New York State’s emancipation act was very similar to that of Upper Canada.) See? Mendaciousness and lies by omission.
And, on history books, having to repeatedly look shit up is guaranteed to piss me off. I skipped the rest of the chapter because I’ve read books about the Underground Railroad as well as “Freedom Ship,” two bios of Charles Sumner and more.
Chapter 8: I’ve read a bio of John Brown, a dual bio of Brown and Lincoln and other material about Brown’s funders. Largely skimmed.
Chapter 9: Reconstruction. Nothing new.
I then have the insight, after seeing no index at the end, but a “Resistance toolkit,” that he’s like the Indivisible dudebros of the first Bernie Sanders campaign. My thoughts about them and their grifting here.
And yes, grifting is the word, and it’s the word I’m ready to use about Stoermer by the 100-page mark.
I mean, think about it. Book officially comes out in June, tour already lined up. (I’m shocked his website doesn’t have a “merch” page.)
A quote from my Indivisible takedown is relevant:
What's also "funny" is that the sheepdoggers, per Ted Rall, seem to talk more about resisting than about proposing specific ideas. Maybe because they know that today's national Democratic Party, with its neoliberal foundations, is largely bankrupt. And we haven't mentioned foreign policy.
More to come at my blog site.
And, here that crushing is, even more in-depth on Substack than on Blogger.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Just when you thought you knew enough American history that you could converse at cocktail parties or to argue astutely, albeit politely, around the Thanksgiving dinner table along comes a book like this. I’ve got news for you. I thought I knew some American history until I read this, and now I must count myself truly ignorant and start relearning things in order to make the history—the Resistance History—matter in today’s context. Otherwise, it just won’t matter much at all.
First about the author. Tad Stoermer is a widely recognized public historian and lecturer in Colonial History, having earned his PhD from the University of Virginia. He also earned fellowships from Harvard, Brown, Yale, and Monticello. He teaches Public History at Johns Hopkins, and is also a Visiting Scholar at the University of Southern Denmark, where he and his family spend some of their time besides Cape Cod. Prior to his writing and academic pursuits, Professor Stoermer was an Army Reconnaissance Scout, and worked in the Democratic political arena.
To those of you who will have the privilege of reading this book when it comes out, please trust me when I tell you that the history you thought you knew well, that your kids perhaps, are getting taught in detail in school—perhaps in college—well, they’re not. And certainly not in any useful detail.
History was, and was always meant to be, a tool for us to use for our benefit in whatever time we’re in and that is what Tad Stoermer has done to great effect with A Resistance History of the United States.
Starting with the first “power plays” between the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts and the indigenous tribes that greeted them in the 1620s, headed by the Wampanoag tribe and their sachem Metacomet (aka King Phillip, familiarly to the English) Stoermer begins with the largest war of the 17th century that resulted in the near erasure of the indigenous tribes from New England by the end of that century.
And you thought the Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower just for freedom of religion. King Phillip’s War, as it became known, lasted nearly three years from 1675 to 1678, and ended with Metacomet’s killing in Rhode Island. Thousands of indigenous tribes’ members were vanquished from New England as a result of the war, and many died by disease, and in combat against the British. This pattern of engagement would continue for the next 150 years.
And this is just the beginning of a long, bigoted history of oppression dressed up as patriotic and religious mythology that most of us grew up with from kindergarten through high school. Perhaps even further in college history classes.
This pattern continues in time and geography down to the Jamestown Settlement of Virginia where Nathaniel Bacon was cooking up a grievance filled power grab of his own. Bacon had his own issues with indigenous tribes in his area, and was quite bigoted as one might imagine, The Governor of the colony, a much more temperate man named William Berkeley would have nothing to do with vanquishing the tribes as Bacon demanded, and a rebellion ensued. The rebellion resulted in Bacon’s execution, and Berkeley’s recall to England.
One of the great and connecting themes of this Resistance History is that for every Colonial American lesson, there is at least one useful tool for modern “resisters” to use today in the battle against oppressive powers that will, without hesitation, use that power to build further to define itself however it wishes, using the most monstrous narratives that civilized society would otherwise find repugnant.
Don’t be alarmed at this bit of time travel! There are great lessons to be taken from over 350 years of rebellious behavior, good and bad, that deserve attention whether one is just reading for strictly educational purposes or, as many who victims of the American slave trade at the hands of mythical luminaries like James Madison, George Washington, and others who had a hand in the drafting of our republic’s original Constitution.
The Underground Railroad, for example was a brilliant and long lasting instrument used to get thousands of slaves to Canada using one the best intelligence networks ever devised. Historians today don’t have all the details on how the network operated.
Going back in time to the Salem Witch Trials of the 1960s where oppressive power was beaten with the truth of the declared innocence of the accused women, who carried that truth to the gallows with them in order to defeat the oppression of the powerful men who sat in judgment of them.
From the use of slaves and indentured servants in the American Revolution, the constitutional compromises that left slavery in place until after the Civil War (Hint: Lincoln favored leaving it alone to preserve the republic) the lessons are detailed, and filled with blueprints of how historically successful resistance movements operated, as well as unsuccessful movements failed. Included are the characteristics of the people that make up both, with detailed examples throughout time.
Tad Stoermer’s A Resistance History of the United States is a master class of methodology in detail, and not just another history easily obtained anywhere. It is powerfully useful, and demands the reader follow the evidence toward the logical—not always comfortable—conclusion.
I highly recommend A Resistance History of the United States to the student of history, as well as any serious student on the current goings on in the world, obtain this book as soon as it becomes available, and derive the important lessons that will be taken from it, and used if willing.
First about the author. Tad Stoermer is a widely recognized public historian and lecturer in Colonial History, having earned his PhD from the University of Virginia. He also earned fellowships from Harvard, Brown, Yale, and Monticello. He teaches Public History at Johns Hopkins, and is also a Visiting Scholar at the University of Southern Denmark, where he and his family spend some of their time besides Cape Cod. Prior to his writing and academic pursuits, Professor Stoermer was an Army Reconnaissance Scout, and worked in the Democratic political arena.
To those of you who will have the privilege of reading this book when it comes out, please trust me when I tell you that the history you thought you knew well, that your kids perhaps, are getting taught in detail in school—perhaps in college—well, they’re not. And certainly not in any useful detail.
History was, and was always meant to be, a tool for us to use for our benefit in whatever time we’re in and that is what Tad Stoermer has done to great effect with A Resistance History of the United States.
Starting with the first “power plays” between the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts and the indigenous tribes that greeted them in the 1620s, headed by the Wampanoag tribe and their sachem Metacomet (aka King Phillip, familiarly to the English) Stoermer begins with the largest war of the 17th century that resulted in the near erasure of the indigenous tribes from New England by the end of that century.
And you thought the Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower just for freedom of religion. King Phillip’s War, as it became known, lasted nearly three years from 1675 to 1678, and ended with Metacomet’s killing in Rhode Island. Thousands of indigenous tribes’ members were vanquished from New England as a result of the war, and many died by disease, and in combat against the British. This pattern of engagement would continue for the next 150 years.
And this is just the beginning of a long, bigoted history of oppression dressed up as patriotic and religious mythology that most of us grew up with from kindergarten through high school. Perhaps even further in college history classes.
This pattern continues in time and geography down to the Jamestown Settlement of Virginia where Nathaniel Bacon was cooking up a grievance filled power grab of his own. Bacon had his own issues with indigenous tribes in his area, and was quite bigoted as one might imagine, The Governor of the colony, a much more temperate man named William Berkeley would have nothing to do with vanquishing the tribes as Bacon demanded, and a rebellion ensued. The rebellion resulted in Bacon’s execution, and Berkeley’s recall to England.
One of the great and connecting themes of this Resistance History is that for every Colonial American lesson, there is at least one useful tool for modern “resisters” to use today in the battle against oppressive powers that will, without hesitation, use that power to build further to define itself however it wishes, using the most monstrous narratives that civilized society would otherwise find repugnant.
Don’t be alarmed at this bit of time travel! There are great lessons to be taken from over 350 years of rebellious behavior, good and bad, that deserve attention whether one is just reading for strictly educational purposes or, as many who victims of the American slave trade at the hands of mythical luminaries like James Madison, George Washington, and others who had a hand in the drafting of our republic’s original Constitution.
The Underground Railroad, for example was a brilliant and long lasting instrument used to get thousands of slaves to Canada using one the best intelligence networks ever devised. Historians today don’t have all the details on how the network operated.
Going back in time to the Salem Witch Trials of the 1960s where oppressive power was beaten with the truth of the declared innocence of the accused women, who carried that truth to the gallows with them in order to defeat the oppression of the powerful men who sat in judgment of them.
From the use of slaves and indentured servants in the American Revolution, the constitutional compromises that left slavery in place until after the Civil War (Hint: Lincoln favored leaving it alone to preserve the republic) the lessons are detailed, and filled with blueprints of how historically successful resistance movements operated, as well as unsuccessful movements failed. Included are the characteristics of the people that make up both, with detailed examples throughout time.
Tad Stoermer’s A Resistance History of the United States is a master class of methodology in detail, and not just another history easily obtained anywhere. It is powerfully useful, and demands the reader follow the evidence toward the logical—not always comfortable—conclusion.
I highly recommend A Resistance History of the United States to the student of history, as well as any serious student on the current goings on in the world, obtain this book as soon as it becomes available, and derive the important lessons that will be taken from it, and used if willing.
July 2, 2026
What an appropriate book to read in the week leading up to the semiquincentennial! If you are the type of activist who finds traditional Marxist-Leninism to be bogged down in its top-down frameworks, but fully accepts the Situationist view that the system of power and finance is almost all too encompassing to oppose, then you'll appreciate this how-to guide on building resilience f0r a lifetime of activism. So why the middling three-star rating?
First, Stoermer's writing leaps from exquisitely-written passages to overuse of half-sentences apparently applied to emphasize a point. Maybe the isolated phrases are easier reading for the attention-hobbled generation Stoermer may be writing for, but one reviewer on Goodreads suggests that large chunks of this book may have been A.I.-generated. If so, it not only hinders the writing style, but A.I. is one of the classic abuses of power Stoermer claims to be working against. If this is so, his hypocrisy is showing. If he wrote the entire book without A.I. intervention, he needs to rewrite those portions that sound like a breathless activist at the barricades shouting phrases in half-sentences.
My second complaint is a personal disagreement on tactics, which should not be a disagreement about the book itself, except for the fact that virtually all effective societal movements in the 2020s adopt some form of commitment to nonviolence - if not a full Thich Nhat Hanh use of nonviolent communications in all things, then at least a commitment to the so-called "St. Paul Principles" of how to accept the tactics of allies. Might there come a time when violence could be seen as justified? Perhaps. But Stoermer's survey of John Brown's assault on Harper's Ferry and the support networks Brown used, suggest that Stoermer might see Luigi Mangione's murder of a health-care executive as justified. He might cheer on the Texas anti-ICE protesters who were given 100-year sentences, even though those protesters did not try to fit in with the passive blockade of ICE most activists used, and instead used violence in performative ways.
The impression I am left with is that Stoermer is not actively part of groups that test the edges of society, he is only an armchair revolutionary cheering others on. If I am wrong, this book might deserve four stars. As it is, I am left with a bad taste in my mouth.
So is A Resistance History of the United States still worth a read? Absolutely, if only because it forces us to use factual language to admit to the utter decline of our republic. The book is not an adjunct or update to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. It covers only the colonial period of the nation up through Reconstruction, but applies resistance movements of the 17th, 18th, and 19th century to problems we face now.
Stoermer does more than point out the obvious fact of the nation's forefathers being slaveholders. He suggests that the Constitution was rigged from its inception, meant to uphold not only slavery, but existing power structures, while being able to face down dissent and co-opt the dissent as it arose. As I mentioned, this is Situationism, but one must be very clever and optimistic to be a Situationist and also a lifelong advocate of resistance. Most of the former group succumb to despair, while most of the latter find that "lifelong" can be a burnout unless one is very careful in how to maintain resilience over decades.
A couple useful anecdotes Stoermer gives us is that of the Salem witch trials, where he says resistance to Cotton Mather would mean denying that the authorities have any claim to reality whatsoever. This is useful in strange times like the 2020s, where anyone in positions of power in any nation is spouting a demonstrably-false unreality and demanding all citizens adhere to such. Of course, the resistance women and their supporters in Salem could insist on facts, and end up just as dead. Stoermer makes clear that many of his suggestions for effective resistance will lead to the death of those that attempt it. Them's the breaks.
Stoermer said the biggest leap of all his steps is that of "strategic provocation," where the resistance movement which is shuttered out from society makes the decision to strategically provoke the state into over-reaction. In the case of Harper's Ferry, this might make limited sense. But the concept seems too much like the 1970s-80s shared idea of European far-right and far-left groups called "Strategy of Tension." You provoke the state into severe crackdown, and citizens see the state for what it is, and rebel. Strategies of Tension never work, because most citizens (even more so now than in the 1850s or 1980s) favor security and safety over concepts of free speech, so they will cheer on the state as the state cracks down. This certainly fits in with the 2020s model where a majority of citizens in several nations freely choose fascism.
In the end, this does not make Stoermer's book useless, because persistent and resilient resistance means the resister must think in terms of decades and centuries. Resisters may well never see end results in their own lifetimes. But if we believe in our principles, blows against the empire still serve a purpose. Happy Semiquincentennial.
First, Stoermer's writing leaps from exquisitely-written passages to overuse of half-sentences apparently applied to emphasize a point. Maybe the isolated phrases are easier reading for the attention-hobbled generation Stoermer may be writing for, but one reviewer on Goodreads suggests that large chunks of this book may have been A.I.-generated. If so, it not only hinders the writing style, but A.I. is one of the classic abuses of power Stoermer claims to be working against. If this is so, his hypocrisy is showing. If he wrote the entire book without A.I. intervention, he needs to rewrite those portions that sound like a breathless activist at the barricades shouting phrases in half-sentences.
My second complaint is a personal disagreement on tactics, which should not be a disagreement about the book itself, except for the fact that virtually all effective societal movements in the 2020s adopt some form of commitment to nonviolence - if not a full Thich Nhat Hanh use of nonviolent communications in all things, then at least a commitment to the so-called "St. Paul Principles" of how to accept the tactics of allies. Might there come a time when violence could be seen as justified? Perhaps. But Stoermer's survey of John Brown's assault on Harper's Ferry and the support networks Brown used, suggest that Stoermer might see Luigi Mangione's murder of a health-care executive as justified. He might cheer on the Texas anti-ICE protesters who were given 100-year sentences, even though those protesters did not try to fit in with the passive blockade of ICE most activists used, and instead used violence in performative ways.
The impression I am left with is that Stoermer is not actively part of groups that test the edges of society, he is only an armchair revolutionary cheering others on. If I am wrong, this book might deserve four stars. As it is, I am left with a bad taste in my mouth.
So is A Resistance History of the United States still worth a read? Absolutely, if only because it forces us to use factual language to admit to the utter decline of our republic. The book is not an adjunct or update to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. It covers only the colonial period of the nation up through Reconstruction, but applies resistance movements of the 17th, 18th, and 19th century to problems we face now.
Stoermer does more than point out the obvious fact of the nation's forefathers being slaveholders. He suggests that the Constitution was rigged from its inception, meant to uphold not only slavery, but existing power structures, while being able to face down dissent and co-opt the dissent as it arose. As I mentioned, this is Situationism, but one must be very clever and optimistic to be a Situationist and also a lifelong advocate of resistance. Most of the former group succumb to despair, while most of the latter find that "lifelong" can be a burnout unless one is very careful in how to maintain resilience over decades.
A couple useful anecdotes Stoermer gives us is that of the Salem witch trials, where he says resistance to Cotton Mather would mean denying that the authorities have any claim to reality whatsoever. This is useful in strange times like the 2020s, where anyone in positions of power in any nation is spouting a demonstrably-false unreality and demanding all citizens adhere to such. Of course, the resistance women and their supporters in Salem could insist on facts, and end up just as dead. Stoermer makes clear that many of his suggestions for effective resistance will lead to the death of those that attempt it. Them's the breaks.
Stoermer said the biggest leap of all his steps is that of "strategic provocation," where the resistance movement which is shuttered out from society makes the decision to strategically provoke the state into over-reaction. In the case of Harper's Ferry, this might make limited sense. But the concept seems too much like the 1970s-80s shared idea of European far-right and far-left groups called "Strategy of Tension." You provoke the state into severe crackdown, and citizens see the state for what it is, and rebel. Strategies of Tension never work, because most citizens (even more so now than in the 1850s or 1980s) favor security and safety over concepts of free speech, so they will cheer on the state as the state cracks down. This certainly fits in with the 2020s model where a majority of citizens in several nations freely choose fascism.
In the end, this does not make Stoermer's book useless, because persistent and resilient resistance means the resister must think in terms of decades and centuries. Resisters may well never see end results in their own lifetimes. But if we believe in our principles, blows against the empire still serve a purpose. Happy Semiquincentennial.
August 2, 2026
There's a lot here and some of it is very good, especially the final two chapters.
That said, Stoermer has a hater who seems to post an article on anyone's feed within minutes of saying you started the book. You can see it on my feed as well. In essence, it claims a suspicion that the book is at least partly written with AI and also that Stoermer may not exist or something. Or that his credentials are suspect. One of those. The basis of that is that he appears nowhere in JSTOR or in google scholar and how can you get to be a PhD in history without one of those being true. I searched myself and that is true. As far as the AI claim goes, the book reads mostly the way he talks (I've heard him speak in person as well as his social media posts), so the most I'm willing to concede is using AI summaries or proofing or something like that. That said, there are some AI tells in the middle chapters that are really, really annoying. Those tells are almost completely absent in the final two chapters.
The book is telling of nine events that are to illustrate nine points of "resistance history". He's also really pushing the phrase "resistance history" to the point it certainly seems like he's trying to coin a phrase. (Also, as an aside, please stop using the word "suasion". Just. Stop.)
All that said, the substance of the book is spot on. The nine points are good ones, the illustrations are good, relevant, and to the point. There's nothing particularly new about any of the stories, but it is very effective having them all together to make the case of why these individual movements failed (or succeeded) and what can be learned from that. the final chapter relates all nine points to current events in a convincing way. One segment that is given short shrift is mentioned only at the very end where where it says that the last successful resistance movement and caused fundamental change was women's suffrage. It's covered a bit in the last chapters, but if it's so successful and created lasting change, shouldn't it be illustrative of on the the fundamental points?
As I said, you can pretty much skip the history stories if you're familiar with them (tho you shouldn't), the real meat is the last two chapters which isn't so much history as political analysis and summary. It's very good. One of his principles is the same as one Rutger Bregman has in "Moral Ambition" which is Principle #3: My Enemy's Enemy -- Your ally doesn't have to be pure. It's a shame most movements, particularly the left, can't see this.
This is a great book and it a must read. I did ding it one star because this is supposed to be a history book yet there isn't a single footnote or endnote and there is no bibliography. I suspect little of this is based on primary sources, but there are a couple of things in here I'd like to read more about. It's not uncommon, at least lately, for textbooks to omit notes and bibliographies but the publisher usually has this info on their website. Norton does this a lot. There's nothing here, so good luck in finding the relevant source material even if it's secondary.
That said, Stoermer has a hater who seems to post an article on anyone's feed within minutes of saying you started the book. You can see it on my feed as well. In essence, it claims a suspicion that the book is at least partly written with AI and also that Stoermer may not exist or something. Or that his credentials are suspect. One of those. The basis of that is that he appears nowhere in JSTOR or in google scholar and how can you get to be a PhD in history without one of those being true. I searched myself and that is true. As far as the AI claim goes, the book reads mostly the way he talks (I've heard him speak in person as well as his social media posts), so the most I'm willing to concede is using AI summaries or proofing or something like that. That said, there are some AI tells in the middle chapters that are really, really annoying. Those tells are almost completely absent in the final two chapters.
The book is telling of nine events that are to illustrate nine points of "resistance history". He's also really pushing the phrase "resistance history" to the point it certainly seems like he's trying to coin a phrase. (Also, as an aside, please stop using the word "suasion". Just. Stop.)
All that said, the substance of the book is spot on. The nine points are good ones, the illustrations are good, relevant, and to the point. There's nothing particularly new about any of the stories, but it is very effective having them all together to make the case of why these individual movements failed (or succeeded) and what can be learned from that. the final chapter relates all nine points to current events in a convincing way. One segment that is given short shrift is mentioned only at the very end where where it says that the last successful resistance movement and caused fundamental change was women's suffrage. It's covered a bit in the last chapters, but if it's so successful and created lasting change, shouldn't it be illustrative of on the the fundamental points?
As I said, you can pretty much skip the history stories if you're familiar with them (tho you shouldn't), the real meat is the last two chapters which isn't so much history as political analysis and summary. It's very good. One of his principles is the same as one Rutger Bregman has in "Moral Ambition" which is Principle #3: My Enemy's Enemy -- Your ally doesn't have to be pure. It's a shame most movements, particularly the left, can't see this.
This is a great book and it a must read. I did ding it one star because this is supposed to be a history book yet there isn't a single footnote or endnote and there is no bibliography. I suspect little of this is based on primary sources, but there are a couple of things in here I'd like to read more about. It's not uncommon, at least lately, for textbooks to omit notes and bibliographies but the publisher usually has this info on their website. Norton does this a lot. There's nothing here, so good luck in finding the relevant source material even if it's secondary.
July 10, 2026
Expected history and got political argument. As an idea, the thesis is interesting while the argument needs further fleshing out. The epilogue is what I found most compelling, especially because Stoermer takes to task some of my favorite constitutional “suasanists”: Jon Meacham, Ken Burns, Aaron Sorkin, and Lin Manuel Miranda. I find myself agreeing with Stoermer that changes to the constitutional framework are necessary and unlikely.
“On January 6, 2021, the First Republic reasserted itself.
….
“This wasn’t democratic breakdown. This was the founders’ framework operating exactly as designed.
“The insurrections understood the Constitution better than its liberal defenders. They’d studied the founders’ design, identified its vulnerabilities, exploited them systematically…. They used the tools the founders created to protect property and prevent popular majorities from seizing power.
“…. The founders created mechanisms to enable minority rule, to protect property from democratic majorities, to prevent the people from controlling government. When a president attempted to keep power through those mechanisms, backed by a minority willing to use violence, the system did what it was designed to do; and the attempt almost worked.
“The moment demanded recognition that the founders’ framework enables authoritarianism. That the vulnerabilities weren’t bugs but features. That defending democracy required transforming or abandoning the constitutional structure itself.“
“[Biden’s] speech was written in large part by Jon Meacham, presidential historian and purveyor of founding mythology to Democratic elites. Meacham’s career consists of selling politicians the comforting lie that the founders already solved democracy’s problems, that wisdom lies in recovering their vision rather than imagining something new….
“Biden didn’t respond structurally because everything in the formation of his understanding of American history and politics taught him that the Constitution is sacred, the founders wise, the system self-correcting. He’s the perfected product of what this book has called liberal nationalism: a political tradition so committed to constitutional reverence that it cannot respond structurally even when the Constitution demonstrably enables democratic collapse, even when democracy’s survival demands transformation.
….
“This is containment perfected. Even literal insurrection—the clearest possible demonstration that the founders’ framework enables rather than prevent hits authoritarianism—produced no transformation because the political culture has made constitutional reform unthinkable.”
—————————-
“The history in this book isn’t about the past. It’s about the patterns that repeat whenever authority abuses itself and people decide whether to submit or resist. These patterns are playing out around you right now. The only question is whether you’re ready to see them—and what you’ll do when you do.
“Resistance isn’t a departure from American ideals. It’s their defense. And their duty.”
“On January 6, 2021, the First Republic reasserted itself.
….
“This wasn’t democratic breakdown. This was the founders’ framework operating exactly as designed.
“The insurrections understood the Constitution better than its liberal defenders. They’d studied the founders’ design, identified its vulnerabilities, exploited them systematically…. They used the tools the founders created to protect property and prevent popular majorities from seizing power.
“…. The founders created mechanisms to enable minority rule, to protect property from democratic majorities, to prevent the people from controlling government. When a president attempted to keep power through those mechanisms, backed by a minority willing to use violence, the system did what it was designed to do; and the attempt almost worked.
“The moment demanded recognition that the founders’ framework enables authoritarianism. That the vulnerabilities weren’t bugs but features. That defending democracy required transforming or abandoning the constitutional structure itself.“
“[Biden’s] speech was written in large part by Jon Meacham, presidential historian and purveyor of founding mythology to Democratic elites. Meacham’s career consists of selling politicians the comforting lie that the founders already solved democracy’s problems, that wisdom lies in recovering their vision rather than imagining something new….
“Biden didn’t respond structurally because everything in the formation of his understanding of American history and politics taught him that the Constitution is sacred, the founders wise, the system self-correcting. He’s the perfected product of what this book has called liberal nationalism: a political tradition so committed to constitutional reverence that it cannot respond structurally even when the Constitution demonstrably enables democratic collapse, even when democracy’s survival demands transformation.
….
“This is containment perfected. Even literal insurrection—the clearest possible demonstration that the founders’ framework enables rather than prevent hits authoritarianism—produced no transformation because the political culture has made constitutional reform unthinkable.”
—————————-
“The history in this book isn’t about the past. It’s about the patterns that repeat whenever authority abuses itself and people decide whether to submit or resist. These patterns are playing out around you right now. The only question is whether you’re ready to see them—and what you’ll do when you do.
“Resistance isn’t a departure from American ideals. It’s their defense. And their duty.”
June 22, 2026
A Resistance History of the United States presents a bold and thought-provoking reinterpretation of American history through the lens of resistance movements and social struggle. Tad Stoermer offers readers a compelling narrative that challenges traditional historical narratives while encouraging a deeper examination of power, inequality, and collective action across centuries.
One of the most striking strengths of this work is its central argument: that resistance, rather than passive acceptance of founding ideals, has been a defining force in shaping the United States. By reframing well-known historical events alongside lesser-known episodes, the book encourages readers to reconsider how American history is traditionally taught and understood.
The inclusion of events such as Bacon’s Rebellion, the witch trials, the experiences of Black Loyalists, and the Underground Railroad provides a wide historical scope that illustrates the long-standing tension between authority and resistance. These case studies help demonstrate how marginalized groups and dissenting voices have continually challenged systems of power throughout American history.
What makes the book particularly engaging is its ability to connect historical analysis with broader questions about justice, memory, and interpretation. Rather than presenting history as a fixed narrative, it emphasizes the contested nature of historical truth and the ways in which dominant narratives can obscure important perspectives.
The storytelling approach is accessible and engaging, making complex historical themes understandable for a broad audience while still maintaining intellectual depth. This balance allows the book to appeal to both general readers and those with a more academic interest in American history and social movements.
One of the most striking strengths of this work is its central argument: that resistance, rather than passive acceptance of founding ideals, has been a defining force in shaping the United States. By reframing well-known historical events alongside lesser-known episodes, the book encourages readers to reconsider how American history is traditionally taught and understood.
The inclusion of events such as Bacon’s Rebellion, the witch trials, the experiences of Black Loyalists, and the Underground Railroad provides a wide historical scope that illustrates the long-standing tension between authority and resistance. These case studies help demonstrate how marginalized groups and dissenting voices have continually challenged systems of power throughout American history.
What makes the book particularly engaging is its ability to connect historical analysis with broader questions about justice, memory, and interpretation. Rather than presenting history as a fixed narrative, it emphasizes the contested nature of historical truth and the ways in which dominant narratives can obscure important perspectives.
The storytelling approach is accessible and engaging, making complex historical themes understandable for a broad audience while still maintaining intellectual depth. This balance allows the book to appeal to both general readers and those with a more academic interest in American history and social movements.
June 28, 2026
Thanks to NetGalley and Steerforth for the digital copy of this book; I am leaving this review voluntarily.
You know what I love about United States history? As one grows up and does independent research and reading on the history of America, you find out it’s a LOT messier than what we learned in grade school. Yet there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans who learned whitewashed history when they were in school decades ago refuse to believe any truths that have come out since then.
Americans are a rebellious lot because of the pie-in-the-sky foundations our country was founded on. Freedom of speech, freedom of Religion (first line of the 1st Amendment, Texas Lt. Governor, who claims that the separation of Church and State does not appear in the Constitution), freedom to Peaceably Assemble, etc. That is, as long as you were a land-owning white man. Everyone who wasn’t landed gentry had to claw and fight to get the rights that most of us have. The Resistance History of the United States tells the well-known as well as lesser-known forms of resistance through our country’s history.
The Salem Witch Trials is studied, and what often doesn’t come out when telling the narrative, is that there were plenty of people who were opposed to murdering women by drowning them because of crazy religious beliefs. When Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad is mentioned, people often forget that many of the formerly enslaved, including Tubman, made their life in Canada, where they could truly be free. It’s those messy bits of American history that make it all the more interesting.
This is a book that should be read slowly, let it sink in, think about it some more, and continue. Some people have forgotten or never learned about some of these stories of resistance that helped make, and continue to define our country,
You know what I love about United States history? As one grows up and does independent research and reading on the history of America, you find out it’s a LOT messier than what we learned in grade school. Yet there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans who learned whitewashed history when they were in school decades ago refuse to believe any truths that have come out since then.
Americans are a rebellious lot because of the pie-in-the-sky foundations our country was founded on. Freedom of speech, freedom of Religion (first line of the 1st Amendment, Texas Lt. Governor, who claims that the separation of Church and State does not appear in the Constitution), freedom to Peaceably Assemble, etc. That is, as long as you were a land-owning white man. Everyone who wasn’t landed gentry had to claw and fight to get the rights that most of us have. The Resistance History of the United States tells the well-known as well as lesser-known forms of resistance through our country’s history.
The Salem Witch Trials is studied, and what often doesn’t come out when telling the narrative, is that there were plenty of people who were opposed to murdering women by drowning them because of crazy religious beliefs. When Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad is mentioned, people often forget that many of the formerly enslaved, including Tubman, made their life in Canada, where they could truly be free. It’s those messy bits of American history that make it all the more interesting.
This is a book that should be read slowly, let it sink in, think about it some more, and continue. Some people have forgotten or never learned about some of these stories of resistance that helped make, and continue to define our country,
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I first followed Tad Stoermer on Tick Tok a year or so ago and found what he shared really informative. He has a style of explaining things so thoroughly and with a critical lens. His book, A Resistance History of the United States comes across in that exact same manner. From the first chapter I was hooked and couldn’t stop sharing information with my family. Tad Stoermer’s perspective is that people resist in a multiple of ways in order to achieve change. It is no accident that authoritarian tendencies are able to appear throughout the history of the United States, our Constitution is written to allow it. Each chapter takes on a different event in history that he then spends time shedding a new light on how it actually happened and why it happened but also why we were told or taught a different narrative of the event. I felt like I was in class with Tad Stoermer while he walked me through how to critically approach the subject matter along with what resistance took place.
Tad Stoermer’s storytelling is amazing and really holds your attention. The writing was exactly like he comes across in his short videos. I highly recommend this book for anyone high school age and older.
Thank you, Tad Stoermer, Steerforth & Pushkin for providing this eARC via NetGalley for review.
Tad Stoermer’s storytelling is amazing and really holds your attention. The writing was exactly like he comes across in his short videos. I highly recommend this book for anyone high school age and older.
Thank you, Tad Stoermer, Steerforth & Pushkin for providing this eARC via NetGalley for review.
July 24, 2026
3.5 ⭐️ I really appreciate a lot about this books argument and storytelling. It’s very engaging and it’s clear the author knows how to keep a reader hooked and engaged. I do find a lot of the sentence structure repetitive at times (which makes me understand why some other reviewers have mentioned potential use of AI). Honestly I don’t think AI was used here I just think there’s some repetitive phrases which many authors are prone too. I wished there were real footnotes/endnotes/citations (I know it’s a trade book so they’re not required but would have definitely been appreciated). It’s very clear to me this is a historian of the 18th century. I honestly think this book could have cut off after the end of the 18th century. I liked the 19th century stuff as a 19th century historian myself but it did feel a little tacked on in comparison to the depth of the 18th century sections. I also kinda felt like the Salem chapter was unnecessary. It didn’t provide as much depth as the others which was disappointing because it was one of the chapters I was looking forward to the most and yet I think I learned the least. It didn’t seem to connect to the overall themes as much as the others. Overall I’d say an effectively written book but maybe needed a bit more editing.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thank you NetGalley and Duckworth & Pushkin Publishing for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
This was an interesting read, but I needed time to sit with it. It's not overly academic, but it definitely makes you think. This book reframes U.S. history through the lens of resistance instead of the usual patriotic "we were always destined for greatness" narrative. What really stood out was how Stoermer centers people and movements that usually get pushed to the footnotes: Bacon's Rebellion, Metacomet's War, the Salem Witch Trials, Black Loyalists, the Underground Railroad, and more. Each chapter tells the story in a vivid way that shows not just what happened, but how those strategies and sacrifices still show up in today's struggles. I appreciated that the book doesn't give you a feel-good ending. It dismantles the comforting myths we've been told and shows how resistance has always forced power to bend, usually at enormous personal cost. That honesty hit hard. As a correction to the version of history most of us were taught, and as a way to think about activism today, it's smart, bracing, and absolutely worth your time.
This was an interesting read, but I needed time to sit with it. It's not overly academic, but it definitely makes you think. This book reframes U.S. history through the lens of resistance instead of the usual patriotic "we were always destined for greatness" narrative. What really stood out was how Stoermer centers people and movements that usually get pushed to the footnotes: Bacon's Rebellion, Metacomet's War, the Salem Witch Trials, Black Loyalists, the Underground Railroad, and more. Each chapter tells the story in a vivid way that shows not just what happened, but how those strategies and sacrifices still show up in today's struggles. I appreciated that the book doesn't give you a feel-good ending. It dismantles the comforting myths we've been told and shows how resistance has always forced power to bend, usually at enormous personal cost. That honesty hit hard. As a correction to the version of history most of us were taught, and as a way to think about activism today, it's smart, bracing, and absolutely worth your time.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I find Stoermer's TikTok videos so captivating, so when I saw his new nonfiction book on Resistance History available on NetGalley I knew I really wanted to read it. As I was reading, I imagined the author narrating it to me and it actually was quite fascinating.
Resistance has always been a part of history where any sort of power is present. It was interesting to read about the different events Stoermer chose to highlight. He relayed what happened in each case and showed how to recognize patterns of how the resistance started, what countered it, and what the outcome was. I thought it was a great glimpse into lesser talked about resistance movements and the reason why most of them failed.
Stoermer does a great job relaying the facts. It does get presented in a more academic narrative so I did have to read a section at a time. That structure is not my type of narrative that I typical like to read but I do think it worked for this topic and I definitely came out with more knowledge on the subject than I had going in.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Steerforth & Pushkin for the advanced reader copy. The above review is 100% my own honest opinion.
Resistance has always been a part of history where any sort of power is present. It was interesting to read about the different events Stoermer chose to highlight. He relayed what happened in each case and showed how to recognize patterns of how the resistance started, what countered it, and what the outcome was. I thought it was a great glimpse into lesser talked about resistance movements and the reason why most of them failed.
Stoermer does a great job relaying the facts. It does get presented in a more academic narrative so I did have to read a section at a time. That structure is not my type of narrative that I typical like to read but I do think it worked for this topic and I definitely came out with more knowledge on the subject than I had going in.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Steerforth & Pushkin for the advanced reader copy. The above review is 100% my own honest opinion.
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