The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle fora New American Politics

by Joshua Green

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Devil’s Bargain comes the revelatory inside story of the uprising within the Democratic Party, of the economic populists led by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

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

For many years, as Green recounts, the Democrats made their bed with Wall Street and big tech, relying on corporate money for electioneering and embracing the worldview that technological and financial innovation and globalization were a powerful net good, a rising tide lifting all boats. Yes, there were howls of pain, but they were written off by most of the elites as the moaning of sore losers mired in the past. There were always some Democratic politicians representing the old labor base who resisted the new dispensation, but these figures never made it very far on a national level. For one thing, they didn’t have the money. But as income inequality ballooned, widening the gulf between the wealthy elite and everyone else, pressures began to build.

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

A masterful account of one of the defining political stories of our age, The Rebels cements Joshua Green’s stature at the first rank of American writers explaining how we’ve arrived at this pass and what lies ahead.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, American, Audiobook, Adult

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 9, 2024

Reviews

[Frank Almaraz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the most interesting part of this book is the history of how the Democratic Party shifted from New Deal and Great Society policies from the 1930’s through 1970’s towards a focus on Wall Street in the 1980’s and 1990’s. More interesting is how, in the late 90’s, economically speaking, there was little difference or disagreements between the Democratic and Republican Parties. Even major party think tanks were working together on monetary and economic policy – until the 2008 stock market crash.

While focus on Wall Street wasn’t much of an issue for the Republican Party, it did eventually create coalitional conflict for the Democratic Party, which gave space for populist rebels on the left. You can easily track the rise of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a direct result from how poorly the 2008 financial crisis was handled by both President Bush and President Obama's administrations. Poorly handled in that the focus of the recovery from both administrations was almost entirely on the financial sector, rather than mainstream Americans.

This book does a great job in reminding that the TARP bailout was supposed to focus on mortgages - it is literally called Troubled Asset Relief Program. The intent of the bill was for the government to purchase troubled assets (mortgages) and refinance them so that people could stay in their homes rather than face foreclosure. The TARP funds were instead given directly to big banks to shore them up with the hope that they would lend and do the work that the government should have done according to the bill. This fateful decision by both administrations to focus the recovery funds on the financial sector is at the heart of the origin for current populism on both the right and the left.

[Alan Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joshua Green, the author of this book, is a journalist, not a professional historian, economist, or political scientist. Nevertheless, “The Rebels” evinces much learning and critical analysis in all of these fields. Additionally, the book is very well written and eminently readable by both general readers and scholars. Its only flaw, as I see it, is the failure to provide hyperlinks in the Kindle text to the endnotes. That, to my mind, is an almost unforgiveable sin. But I attribute that unwise decision to the publisher, not to the author.

The title of the book may be somewhat misleading. Although the biographies of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are highlighted, its underlying theme is a well-documented explication of the transformation of the Democratic Party from a worker-centered New Deal perspective to a neoliberal finance focus, starting in the late 1970s with a belief that the Democratic Party must become more like the Republican Party in order to attain electoral success. (See the discussion of “neoliberalism” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolibe....) Thus, President Bill Clinton and many Democrats in Congress during his administration aligned with Republicans in order to deregulate the financial industry, which led to the financial crisis of 2008 and the ensuing Great Recession. Moreover, Democrats made alliances with Republicans in order to adopt free trade agreements (NAFTA and the admission of China to the WTO) that, contrary to the predictions of free market ideology, led to the relocation of significant portions of U.S. industry to Mexico and China without displaced American workers finding alternative employment. The resulting hollowing-out of American industrial cities, together with the tepid response of the Obama administration and Congress to the Great Recession (privileging big banks over the suffering of ordinary people), led to the movement of blue collar workers from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party with the rise of right-wing demagogue and quasi-authoritarian Donald J. Trump.

It is from these ominous developments that the political challenges of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez arose. Joshua Green discusses his biographical subjects with care, generally sympathetic to their causes but not blind to their political faults. In short, the last several years have witnessed a progressive counterrevolution of liberal Democrats to the finance-oriented neoliberalism dominating the Democratic Party during the decades since the late 1970s. Warren, Sanders, and AOC have been instrumental in that movement, but it was President Joe Biden who incorporated lessons learned into a surprisingly progressive and successful response to the economic dislocation of the COVID pandemic. Biden, of course, has been given little credit for this achievement and, as of the time this review is being written, is in danger of being defeated by Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

Alan E. Johnson
Independent Philosopher, Historian, Political Scientist, and Legal Scholar
February 12, 2024

(minor edits on February 14, 2024)

[Zach Brandt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating history of the Democratic Party over the last 20 years. The bits about the rise of the different populist figures was fascinating, but for me, the details about the economic fallout during the Obama years was too dense.

I also found the ending interesting: maybe the future of progressive politics in America belongs to a figure who appears moderate enough to get elected, but who actually supports the progressive policies most Americans truly want. Nevertheless, the book was released at a poor time, as the rest of 2024 would have changed the tone of the ending pretty dramatically. Many democrats think one reason Harris lost was that she appeared too centrist. Sooo… I dunno.

[John Schorg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offers a convincing argument that the real disruptive force in our government is both political parties electing to let corporate interests hold unreasonable control over financial policies that have destroyed millions of lives. It suggests the answer to this dilemma can be found in the populist efforts of a group of politicians like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. As the author admits, it is too early in the game to see if those efforts can be successful in today's toxic political climate, which makes his arguments in later sections of the book on the necessity of working for compromise interesting. Books of this type still have trouble explaining the 2008 financial crisis in a coherent fashion, but the author should be credited for seeing there can be a way out of the messiness of the past several years.

[Colton Hudspeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, as it gave a deep history of the democratic party from jimmy carter to present age, as well as the impact that the 2008 crisis had on the party.

The book went into a lot of detail about Elizabeth Warren: her rise to prominence, her policies, faults and accomplishments. When we got to Bernie and AOC, though, I felt like we mostly got a Wikipedia bio, which was disappointing.

Still, a great book on the history of how the democrat party become a populist party (similar to the GOP today).

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first 200 pages of this book are amazing. The last 96 are pretty average punditry about contemporary politics. Green I think does not delve into the hold on the Democratic Party financial interests have presently as perceptively as he did on these same interests in years past. Not as good as his first book but pretty solid.

[Bob · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book starts and finishes strong, but in between I found him to have a penchant for overly simple and dubious analysis. He delves into hero worship of progressives, never seems to miss taking a shot at centrists like Obama or Biden, and seems to have an odd affinity for Trump that made me dubious of author's politics. He does redeem himself in final chapter and epilogue, but it doesn't really save this book.

[Parker]

“The right book is worth a thousand podcasts” - me after finishing this one

[Cristian Cristea · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this world where everything is propaganda, this book is an example of balance. The title is misleading. This is an objective, non judgmental history of the Democratic Party since Carter lost to Reagan until Biden arrived at the White House.

The pivotal moment is the 2008 crisis, the chosen path forward and its consequences. The most visible of these consequences is treated in a separate book, Trump. In this book we see the evolution of Warren, Sanders and a bit of AOC.

But what is magnificently done is the tone imposed. The populism is called out the same way as hypocrisy. There is no bland admiration or criticism, just facts and a balanced opinion expressed. There is so much to learn from this. I think that if one would read all the newspapers since the 80 ies would learn less than by reading this book.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a great book even if I disagree somewhat with JG's analysis of the Trump phenomenon. This book is a reasonable length, and it tells an important story about how the Democratic Party has changed in the last 50 years, with a focus on the last ten. Greene moves quickly but always provides adequate context and social science analysis, making for a brisk and interesting read.

I'm a kind of middle-of-the-road liberal Democrat (voted Clinton and Biden in 2016 and 2020 primaries) who often finds myself frustrated with the progressive wing of the party (especially the academic left). On the other hand, Liz Warren was my second choice by a hair in 2020, so I am on board with a lot of the progressive economic reforms and programs advocated by the 3 main characters of this book: Liz, Bernie, and AOC. Greene gives great biographies of all three to illustrate how they shifted the Democratic Party leftward on economics. Biden, for instance, was pretty much your classic neo-liberalish Clinton Democrat for decades, but he has governed to the left of Obama on most economic issues. That's a testament to the groundswell of pressure and new ideas created by these newcomers (or in some cases old-newcomers).

But it also reflects a broader historical story that Greene tells very well. Democrats since the New Deal had been the party of labor, the working class, black people, but also southern segregationists. This alliance started to collapse in the 1960s and eventually splintered completely in the face of the Reagan juggernaut. To keep up with Republican fund-raising prowess, Democrats like Tony Coehlo started to pull more support from Wall Street, which was often socially liberal but economically free-market. The tide of ideas at the time also tilted toward neo-liberal reforms and the removal of regulations, lowering of taxes on the wealthy, minimizing of welfare programs, etc, and Democrats hewed more to this line as well, a trend that peaked under Clinton. These moves were understandable in their time if a bit cynical, but they further cut the cords between the party and the white working class.

Little groundswells of discontent with neo-liberal popped up here and there but never gained much traction until the 2008 financial crisis. Not only did the perfidy and greed of Wall Street and the mortgage industry screw millions of Americans, Bush and Obama again chose to prioritize stabilizing big banks and industries like the car industry over helping ordinary people, who lost their homes and jobs and often could not relocate to where opportunities existed (in contrast to prevailing economic theory's predictions). So while left-populism was in part a response to the financial crisis, it was also a response to Obama's business-friendly governance, the slow recovery, and structural unfairness in the economic system as a whole. The rise of left-populism is really an attempt to weaken the Wall STreet-Democratic Party connection and rebuild links to the working class.

I do have a few small critiques of this book though. First, I think Greene underplays race/culture as explanations for Trumpism: fear of demographic change, cultural change, resentment at a changing country, nostalgia, and just straight up racial prejudice. Of course this is mixed with "economic anxiety," but Trump really only appeals to the white working class, so the usefulness of a class-centric explanation is limited. There's also a lot of granular voting data to show that Trump voters are actually way more white middle class than they might seem, and that they put issues like culture and immigration above bread and butter economic issues.

Second, Greene is aware of a big problem for progressivism but I think he still downplays it: it isn't that popular, and it is popular mainly among whiter, well-educated people. AOC's primary campaign, for example, won votes mainly from more educated white gentrifiers, not the mixed-race working class that many on the Left imagine they are connected with. Greene talks about the huge gap between an increasingly educated, urban, and economically stable (if not wealthy) strata of people who manage the Democratic Party and the larger working class of any race, which is often resentful of and alienated from the educated progressives' rhetoric and ideas. The Party, in short, may not want Wall Street, but it has also consistently rejected Bernie-style social democratic policies, showing that it is still pretty center-liberal (closer to Liz Warren's pro-regulated capitalism than Bernie or AOC's positions).

This book has important messages for progressives/the Left, a group I often sympathize with but do not fully identify with: you have to institutionalize yourselves and work within the system, including with people whose ideals and goals you don't share fully, to achieve much of anything. Ideological and moral purity is the enemy of getting anything done. And in the age of an insane GOP, compromises will have to be made, and you will have to rally around the Democratic candidate even if it is someone like Joe Biden. Overall, I think their presence has been a good thing for the Party: it ensures a wider range of ideas, more energy at the base, and challenges the neoliberal complacency that wasn't really working.

Greene's book is an excellent guide to all of this. I recommend pairing it with Michael Kazin's "What it Took to Win," which tells a deeper history but reaches similar conclusions.

[Lynette Bouchie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I'd read it on a Kindle. This author used a lot of vocabulary that I didn't know and just wanted to look up, which would have been easy on a Kindle. It was an interesting historical look at the shifting Democratic party. I enjoyed it, but some parts were a little dry.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much like Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, this is the exact kind of political history book I enjoy reading. The story begins in the late 70s during the Carter administration, and finishes with the first two years of the Biden administration, and considers the forces that led to both Donald Trump and the recent 'Democratic wing of the Democratic party' energy behind people like Senators Warren and Sanders, and Representative Ocasio-Cortez. Essentially, the Democrats started chasing Wall Street money when Reagan won, and stopped focusing on needs the working class as they pursued cultural issues instead of economic ones (Joan Walsh's What′s the Matter with White People? Why We Long for a Golden Age That Never Was is the best book I've ever read about this reality).

This book looks at the Great Recession of 2008-2010 and traces the unbelievable victory of Donald Trump in 2016 back to its brutal impact on working people. Bail out the banks, fuck the people, essentially, resulted in the rise of populists on both sides of our political divide. I read this book in a day, and it reminded me of some things I already know but have forgotten: money drives DC, and it is those who eschew that money--a species of Democratic politicians as rare as hen's teeth--who can speak to We the People in a way that actually can produce change.

Bernie Sanders was an unpopular non-Democrat from a small, poor state...and he raised hundreds of million of dollars through small donations. No PAC money. No corporate money. Just people. AOC knocked off the man who was in line to be the next speaker of the House with shoe-leather and Facebook videos. Warren was a Harvard professor who went to DC and dissected the titans of Wall Street on Youtube. Pretty incredible, as is the rise of Donald Trump, a man who nuked the Republican Party before taking it over and rebuilding it in his own vile image.

This is an excellent, readable book. Highly recommended.

[Vincent]

Here’s the thing, this book makes good points. And objectively these politicians have done great things.

However when it comes to walking the walk suddenly they clock out. When a bill about increasing police presence in the capital was introduced after the insurrection, pretty much all of the senate voted yes, with AOC voting as present. This is a problem on multiple levels, but fundamentally doesn’t fix anything nor address the underlying issue of fascist politics that caused the insurrection. It’s also a problem because America always, conveniently, has no money for any issue that would benefit people like universal health care or student loan forgiveness but when it comes to police suddenly there’s plenty of money to go around.

Speaking of money, let’s talk about all the tax dollars that are going to fund a genocide! All three of these politicians are silent when they could be using their platforms and power to protect and liberate Palestinians but are perpetuating harm. When they all finally did speak up it was half hearted, misinformed, and abysmal at best. Especially since all of them had no problem voting in favor of Res 888.

Obviously the author couldn’t have known this would happen since this was published before all of this but I think it’s dangerous to not critique politicians especially when they say they want to see change and protect marginalized communities but have no problem allowing a genocide to continue.

[Jeremy Cohen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m a fan of Joshua Green as a reporter and like what he is attempting here but this book needed more editing and shaping - as is, it’s kind of a scattershot take on a bunch of topics trying to frame how Democrats became cozy with corporate interests to stay solvent during Reagan years and how Warren and Sanders marked the return of a worker based populism to the Democratic Party. But even the sections on Warren don’t give me that much more perspective than anything I already knew, and the stuff on Sanders is barely scratching the surface. Actually the most interesting stuff that I didn’t know involve Tony Coelho the man who led the Democrats to corporate Wall Street money in the wake of Reagan, but also who envisioned a fundraising base that would free them from such interest interests- something that only became realized with the Internet and upstart campaigns like Sanders led. Also, the book has an ax to grind with the Obama response to the financial crisis and tries to tie that to the rise of populism and Trump, but doesn’t really succeeded in making that case. It’s clearer that the labor policies of Clinton and jobs going to China played a larger factor in people feeling left behind by Clinton bush and Obama. Anyhow, the book needed more shaping, but there’s some interesting stuff.

[Nick Pisciotta · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think that Joshua Green did a phenomenal and intriguing job chronicling that transformational shift of the Democratic and Republican parties in the past 40 years. For all those that have been left in a state of shock and confusion following US politics this past decade, this book cleanly lays out the contributing factors that culminated in the populist rejection of the neoliberal ideology characterizing both parties.

The book's, and my personal, protagonists, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have truly captured and faithfully represented those rejecting the current financial status quo, and have been instrumental in not only bringing awareness, but holding guilty parties accountable to the catastrophic greed and shortsighted malfeasance committed by the past five administrations.

It still continues to astound me as to why an incompetent, inflammatory demagogue was chosen to spearhead the effort to usher in the oh-so-needed change to this nation's government and financial institutions as opposed to the aforementioned characters (particularly Sanders and Warren), but after reading this book you'll understand why the field was so rife for a shake up such as Donald Trump.

[Steve Nolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Might as well been called, "Why Elizabeth Warren has the worst political instincts of all time."

My very first foray into politics was knocking doors for her campaign in 2012 - I saw her on the Daily Show! she was great at yelling at the people that needed to be yelled at! - but even I had no idea how involved in Washington she was before that campaign. Turns out, a lot! And did good work! The stuff that drew me in initially.

Everything she did since then tho, HOO BOY. Blew 2016 by not running. (Not only was there a "Draft Warren" movement mentioned in this book that I knew nothing about, but she was even someone that Bernie wanted to run, lol.) Too chickenshit to take on Clinton, and that worked out swell for everyone that year. Deciding to then jump in for 2020, and keep the ship going long enough to shiv Bernie again (I'm getting insanely angry about the "a woman cannot be president" bullshit she pulled) on Super Tuesday, just....the worst! That, plus immediately pulling back on Medicare for All as soon as she got ANY criticism for it, she just...did not have the juice. Never did. Pow Wow Chow, my ass.

Is this just a space for me to be mad at Elizabeth Warren? Yes, yes it is. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

[Ryan Rosen · Rating 4 out of 5]

My issues with this back are mostly word choice, grammar, and sentence structure. Bro went crazy with the thesaurus. Sentences such as the one which started with "But what emerged inter alia..." And ended "had had a point." made my brain hurt. Everything else was fantastic. Many points in this book surprised me and taught me new things about the 3 politicians in question. There are also a lot of call backs to his other book on the change that has occurred on the Right that led to Trump. I'm very interested in reading that one as well. The book covers a vast amount of political history starting with Jimmy Carter and ending at present day with Joe Biden. Elizabeth Warren gets the most attention with AOC getting the least but it makes sense given each member's overall roll and impact. I was pleasantly surprised at how much of the focus was on economics and the pairing of political history and economic history really helped tell the story. Highly recommend.

[Travis English · Rating 4 out of 5]

not really what the title says... but, a good and readable political history of the democratic party

This book is more of a history of the democratic party. He focuses a good portion on the fundraising efforts of the party after Carter, and the rightward (pro-business, pro-wall street) move of the Clinton democrats. The author spends a good amount of time on Warren, framing her as the voice that was able to break the mold a bit. The Bernie part of the book is a pretty short chapter, as is the AOC part.

The most interesting part of the book is the Warren section. Warren went after Obama for "bailing out wall street" instead of "bailing out main street".

He tries to compare these more leftists candidates to Trump, i.e. Trump and Bernie are both populist candidates, because they're not backed by wall street or traditional party interests. I'm not sure I fully got that part.

The writing is really strong, though. I devoured this audiobook in a single day. It's really iterestings. Four stars for good storytelling.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book feels like an unofficial sequel to Thomas Frank's Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People, with the bulk of it picking up where that book left off. Listen, Liberal covered how the Democratic party moved away from its roots as the party of the people. The Rebels covers the valiant attempts made by the left wing of the party (particularly Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, & Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) to return it to its roots. Whether they will ultimately succeed is still not entirely clear, but it is obvious that the Democratic party of 2024 is not the Democratic party of a decade ago.

[Brockdon Lawhead · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great analysis of the fade and rise of left economic populism in US politics. That’s a mouthful but I found this book very digestible and very informative. I think it is very interesting to learn how the Democratic Party strayed from its pro labor policies to pro Wall Street, and this book does an excellent job of laying out exactly how that happened. Further, it makes a fantastic case for continuing to engage with politics on the left to further cement this legacy. The only way to continue to push the party to the left is to work on the in and outside of systems to fully realize change. You don’t earn a spot at the table by leaving it. You stay at the table and make yourself as loud as possible so that no one has a choice but to listen.
Also AOC for President, no questions asked

[Dave Fransen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always been a little on the fence with Ocasio-Cortez and especially Sanders. I've liked Warren a bit more than the others. And while this book did nothing to change my mind on Sanders (still MILDLY pro), it made me appreciate AOC and E.Sanders A LOT more than I did before. It reminded me that I flirted with voting for Liz in the 2020 primary.

I found the book, overall, to be slightly annoying in the way it's written. It jumps around, talking about its human subjects - but then rehashing and delving in depth into Occupy Wall Street. Yes, it's all related, but I found the flow somewhat jarring. Otherwise, a very good book.

[Chris Barsanti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less inherently dramatic perhaps than Green's Steve Bannon chronicle Devil's Bargain but a similarly insightful study of how an insurgent movement overthrew a political party's seemingly unshakeable orthodoxy almost by accident. Green's history is particularly valuable for its pinpointing of Jimmy Carter as the Democratic leader who began the party's shift away from labor-friendly economic populism to Wall Street-allied neoliberalism before Bill Clinton (who usually gets all the criticism) fully cemented it. Also some good thumbnail portraits of Warren, Sanders, and Ocasio-Cortez that go beyond the usual caricatures.

[Sanjay Banerjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book traces the rise of left wing liberalism in the US since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, how it is reshaping the Democratic Party and traces the rise of 3 key exponents - Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. The book enabled me to also understand the context of Donald Trump’s rise since the Presidential elections of 2016, how it was countered by the Democrats especially during the 2020 elections and what is playing out in US politics currently. This book should be read by anyone wishing to make sense of the US politics and society since 2008.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Rebels proved most enlightening, as Joshua Green deftly recounts the transformation of the Democratic party from Jimmy Carter's presidency to the present. Focusing on three very liberal leaders beginning with Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic party begins to shift left. Each of the new politicians Ms Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez add to the shift in their own way, while sometimes but not always working together. Definitely an informative must read, with interesting personal annecdotes about each of these individual Democratic rebels.

[Lucas · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book analyzes the Democratic Party from Jimmy Carter times to the 2008 financial crisis its aftermath.

Joshua Green, narrates the apparent transformation the party has undergone transitioning to a populist fase through the characters of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

I felt the book was the author's intent to move away from his last work "Devil;s Bargain" portraying the Trump campaign. The plot/thesis of this book, I believe is not entirely consistent with the overall line of the democratic party.

[Daniel Silliman · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting accounting of the resurgence of a populist left focused on economic issues. For my taste, there was too much telling and not enough showing. The book also didn't quite figure out how to talk about the tension people feel between the prioritization of economic issues and cultural issues (though that's clearly present in the story and a major factor in the shape of the American left). But this was a good overview of what happened to the Democrats to make them so pro-Wall Street in the 80s, 90s, and 00s, and the response to that after the financial crisis.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Rebels is a fascinating and enlightening look at how the Democratic Party metamorphosed from FDR's New Deal party of the working man to the Party of Wall Street beginning in the late 1970's under Jimmy Carter. Green looks at how Warren, Sanders, and AOC dragged the party back toward its 1930's roots - with a little help from the financial crash of 2008 and the neoliberal response of Barak Obama's pinstripped Admimistration. Listened to the audiobook, which was wonderful.

[Patrick Bair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterful storytelling by Joshua Green. The book traces the rise of left populism since 2008 through the careers of three vital figures: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Deepening and broadening understanding of factors we knew, like the Occupy movement, and introducing smaller, behind the scenes groups pulling the party along toward a more populist base. Excellent reading.

[Miguel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this one as Green used the overview of the protagonists to cover broader aspects of the US political landscape. Glad that Warren is covered fairly extensively here - it's sad yet predictable how she was pilloried by the right in spite of having some common sense approaches to consumer protection.

[Joann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to this book I am better informed about how the government and political parties in the United States arrived at the situation they are currently in. A very readable summary with hope at the end of it all that more rebels will begin to step forward and take effective action. And that we will hear and support them if appropriate.