Rockin' the Boat: 50 Iconic Revolutionaries - From Joan of Arc to Malcom X

by Jeff Fleischer

Overview

We love to root for the underdog, and when it comes to underdogs, few are more impressive than the world’s great revolutionaries.After all, it’s pretty hard to find a more powerful opponent than the world’s biggest empires and emperors. And that’s part of why we’re drawn to the stories of revolutionaries. Many of these men and women were born into virtual dystopias, and they fought throughout their lives, against all odds, to forge a path to a better future. And whether they succeeded, failed, or succeeded only to become a new kind of enemy, there’s something inherently fascinating about that effort to change the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541581999
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/01/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	16 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	13 - 14 Years

About the Author

Jeff Fleischer is a Chicago-based author, editor, and journalist. He is the author of A Hot Mess: How the Climate Crisis Is Changing Our World (Zest Books, 2021), Votes of Confidence: A Young Person's Guide to American Elections (Zest Books, 2020 and 2016), Rockin' the Boat: 50 Iconic Revolutionaries (Zest Books, 2015) and The Latest Craze: A Short History of Mass Hysterias (Fall River Press, 2011). His fiction has appeared in more than seventy publications including The Chicago Tribune's Printers Row Journal, Shenandoah, The Saturday Evening Post, and So It Goes by the Kurt Vonnegut Library and Museum. He has a master's in magazine journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a bachelor's in both journalism and history from Indiana University.

Editorial Reviews

12/15/2014
From ancient civilizations to the 20th century, 50 movers and shakers get their due in this informative and sometimes tongue-in-cheek guide, which examines Cleopatra, Judah Maccabee, Nat Turner, Michael Collins, and Che Guevara, among others. Fleischer capably places the individuals in their history milieu, zeroing in on the circumstances behind their notoriety, as well as the ways their influence has endured, while sidebars provide additional context and modern parallels (Fleischer compares Roman politicians and brothers Gaius and Tiberius Gracchus to John and Robert Kennedy). A lively narrative, an accessible length (while the profiles are dense, they are kept to roughly four pages each), and deadpan humor—particularly in captions (George Washington is “tight in tights” and Sitting Bull “sits bullishly”)—allow for irreverent, edifying reading. Ages 14–up. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"From ancient civilizations to the 20th century, 50 movers and shakers get their due in this informative and sometimes tongue-in-cheek guide, which examines Cleopatra, Judah Maccabee, Nat Turner, Michael Collins, and Che Guevara, among others. Fleischer capably places the individuals in their history milieu, zeroing in on the circumstances behind their notoriety, as well as the ways their influence has endured, while sidebars provide additional context and modern parallels (Fleischer compares Roman politicians and brothers Gaius and Tiberius Gracchus to John and Robert Kennedy). A lively narrative, an accessible length (while the profiles are dense, they are kept to roughly four pages each), and deadpan humor—particularly in captions (George Washington is 'tight in tights' and Sitting Bull 'sits bullishly')—allow for irreverent, edifying reading." –Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2014-12-22
A gallery of historical troublemakers starting with Hannibal and ending with Martin Luther King, Jr. Fleischer chooses figures who worked, with high visibility but varying levels of success, to overthrow governments, liberate countries from foreign rule or fight for the rights of the oppressed. He arranges his entries by birth date, opens each with an old or period image and spins out career portraits in an occasionally breezy idiom: Julius Caesar's heir Octavian was "ticked off," Guy Fawkes was a man "jonesing to fight" Protestantism, and Elizabeth Cady and Henry Stanton were "an activist power couple." Snarky picture captions ("Emma Goldman is not interested in your nonsense") and sidebar references to pop culture further lighten the overall tone. Still, the author does not soft-pedal the brutality to which some of his subjects turned, however idealistic they may have started out, or the violent ends to which many of them came. Though the cast is largely European and/or male, it includes such less-well-known male freedom fighters as Metacom (aka King Philip), Maori leader Hone Heke and Daniel Shays and such women as Boudica and New Zealand feminist Kate Sheppard. Suggestions for further reading, a discussion guide and relevant updates will be available online; alas, there are no bibliography or source notes as such, nor is there an index. Salutary portraits in radicalism. (Collective biography. 11-14)

Kirkus Reviews