Bernie

by Ted Rall

Overview

The only graphic novel-style biography of the Presidential Contender.

National Bestseller updated for 2020 with 24 new pages taking Bernie into the 2020 election.

Ted Rall's Bernie explores the personal and political development of a man who burst onto the national stage in 2015—rallying Americans and shaking up the Democratic Party—after decades in Congress. He's leading the polls, but win or lose the Democratic nomination for 2020, he's setting a new benchmark for a revived progressivism within a party that has rejected it for half a century. Insightful, funny, and accessible, this biography-in-graphic-novel-form of the presidential candidate explains both his early life and political rise, but also shows the broader history (and decline) of progressive democratic values in the U.S. until Bernie brought them back to the forefront of the political conversation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644210338
Publisher:	Seven Stories Press
Publication date:	06/16/2020
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	53 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Twice the winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, TED RALL is a radical syndicated political cartoonist, opinion columnist, graphic novelist, and occasional war correspondent whose work has appeared in hundreds of publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Village Voice, and Los Angeles Times. For Seven Stories Press, he is the illustrator of the full-length comic Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps (2012), written by Greg Palast, and the author and illustrator of The Book of Obama (2012), The Anti-American Manifesto (2010), and After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back as Honored Guests (Hill and Wang 2014). His graphic biography, Snowden (2015), was called "A dramatic, evocative, thoughtful and very accessible account of one of the most important stories of the century" by Noam Chomsky. In July 2016 Rall's graphic biography of the presidential candidate, Trump, will be published.

Editorial Reviews

"Rall’s illustrated work, in the same format as his acclaimed Snowden, is an illuminating, clear-headed, straight-shooting argument on why American voters should support and elect Senator Bernie Sanders to president. ... In the months leading up to the Democratic Convention, this is an essential survey and solid political ammunition for Sanders supporters, with appeal to politically minded readers." —Publishers Weekly

"More than a campaign biography, this graphic narrative traces the decline and possible resurgence of liberalism within the Democratic Party.... An effective, if unapologetically partisan, primer on a strong voice from the left to counter the Democrats' rightward shift." —Kirkus Reviews

"What sets this book apart is not that it's a cartoon, but that it's an argument for placing Bernie Sanders in a particular position in U.S. history, namely as the restoration of liberalism to a Democratic Party that hasn't seen it since the McGovern campaign. In fact, a huge chunk of the book is not about Bernie at all, but is a history of the rightward drifting of the Democratic Party over the decades. Another big chunk is a history of Bernie's childhood and career. Both of these sections are well done." —David Swanson, executive director, World Beyond War

"Whatever one’s political persuasion, 'Bernie' is quick and thoroughly entertaining, delivering both an incisive read of post-Vietnam War political history and Mr. Rall’s distinct, abstract comic art." —East Hampton Star

"Delightful ... Bernie's story is fascinating." —Tablet Magazine

From the Publisher

2015-12-21
More than a campaign biography, this graphic narrative traces the decline and possible resurgence of liberalism within the Democratic Party. The candidate for the presidential nomination barely makes an appearance until more than a third of the book has passed, as the introductory sections offer an incisive analysis of just how far to the right the Democratic Party has drifted. Political cartoonist and war correspondent Rall (Snowden, 2015, etc.) asserts that the defeats of McGovern and Mondale, the one-term presidency of Carter in between, and the ineffectual candidacy of Dukakis all served to move the party away from its traditional liberal mandate toward the center. Sanders was no one's obvious choice to be the standard-bearer of a liberal uprising, not even the candidate's, but the times made him inevitable—at least according to this book. As the party no longer accommodated positions such as those in the Occupy movement and opponents to the Wall Street rescue, Sanders decided that if no other candidate would give voice to that constituency, he would. The latter half of the book traces his remarkable political rise, as he defeated a six-term incumbent to become mayor of Burlington, "one of the great upsets in Vermont political history," and went on to represent his state as a popular independent in both the House and the Senate. Rall's analysis is scathingly radical. He labels George W. Bush "the most radical right-wing Republican of the modern political era," dismisses Bill Clinton as a "DINO—Democrat in Name Only," and blasts "Obama's stormtroopers" for the violent dispersing of the nonviolent Occupy protestors. And Bernie? "If he was a fringe kook, he was a popular one" as a senator, and though this biography shows little confidence that Sanders will be nominated, let alone elected president, it demonstrates why he's been able to pose a greater challenge than anticipated. An effective, if unapologetically partisan, primer on a strong voice from the left to counter the Democrats' rightward shift.

Kirkus Reviews