The Uprising

An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt

Scaring Wall Street and Washington

An All-Access Pass to the Populist Insurrection
Brewing Across the Country

Join David Sirota on June 5, for a critical discussion of his latest book, The Uprising, and hear him report first-hand on the grassroots rumblings happening across the political spectrum yet under the media radar. read more>>

Job outsourcing. Perpetual busy signals at government agencies. Slashed paychecks. Stolen elections. A war without end, fatally mismanaged. Ordinary Americans on both the Right and Left are tired of being disenfranchised by corrupt politicians of both parties and are organizing to change the status quo. In his invigorating new book, David Sirota investigates whether this uprising can be transformed into a unified, lasting political movement.

Throughout the course of American history, uprisings like the one we are seeing now have given birth to powerful movements to end wars, protect workers and expand civil rights, so the prospect of today’s uprising turning into a full-fledged populist movement terrifies Wall Street and Washington.

In "The Uprising," Sirota takes us far from the national media spotlight into the trenches where real change is happening—from the headquarters of the most powerful third party in America to the bowels of the U.S. Senate; from the auditorium of an ExxonMobil shareholder meeting to the quasi-military staging area of a vigilante force on the Mexican border. This is vital, on-the-ground reporting that immerses us in the tumultuous give-and-take of politics at its most personal.

Sirota also offers a biting critique of our politics. He shows how the uprising is, at its core, a reaction to faux “bipartisanship” in the nation’s capital—the “bipartisanship” whereby Republican and Democratic lawmakers join together in putting the agenda of corporate interests above all those of ordinary citizens.

Ultimately, Sirota reminds us that the Declaration of Independence, “America’s original uprising manifesto,” says that governments “derive their powers from the consent of the governed.” Irreverent and insightful, "The Uprising" shows how the governed have stopped consenting and have started taking action.


Tom Frank, author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

"After so many decades of fake populism — of revolts by the wealthy, red-state fantasies, and stock-picking grandmas — could we finally be looking at the real thing? In this compelling book, rooted in history but as contemporary as this morning"s newspaper, David Sirota gives us reason to hope."

Naomi Klein, author of "No Logo"
"David Sirota is a clear-headed and principled hell-raiser for economic justice. More like him and we'll have a real uprising on our hands."

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone correspondent
"David Sirota is honest, uncompromising, passionate, and a brilliant communicator. He is the most important progressive voice we have in this country. "The Uprising" should be read by anyone who wants to understand exactly how the ordinary person has been sold out by the political system."

Bill McKibben, author of "Deep Economy"
"This book engages in the nearly lost art of reporting to tell us what's going on in the many places that the elite media can't be bothered to look. It chronicles just how fed up Americans have become, and nominates a few heroes for them to turn to: that great senator Bernie Sanders, or the activist nun Pat Daly, for instance. It cheered me a good deal to read how many Americans are finally starting to fight back against the rule of greed that has been our lot for too many years."

Tom Hayden, author of "The Tom Hayden Reader"
"With a historian's and a journalist's storytelling gifts, David Sirota describes the populist tide that so many elites fear and ignore at all our peril: multinational corporations that rip off local communities as if they were resource colonies, a national security state that manipulates our young to bleed for that same empire, and a political elite more concerned with preserving its power than empowering citizens to become self-governing. Since leaving the Beltway behind, David Sirota has become a must-read chronicler in the populist tradition."

Joe Trippi, strategist for Howard Dean and John Edwards
"David Sirota details with clarity the sharp knife of corporate greed pointed at the throat of our democracy - and the populist uprising that may thwart the threat if enough Americans heed his call. If you love your country, buy "The Uprising," read it, and act."


About the Author

David Sirota is a political journalist, New York Times bestselling author and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist living in Denver. He is a senior fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network, both nonpartisan research organizations. He writes a weekly, nationally syndicated column for Creators Syndicate which now appears in newspapers with a combined daily circulation of more than 1.6 million readers. Newspapers running Sirota's column weekly include The Denver Post, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Seattle Times. He also maintains a daily blog at Credo Action.

Sirota's first book, Hostile Takeover (Crown 2006), was a New York Times bestseller. He has been profiled in Newsweek and the Rocky Mountain News. The New York Times has called him a "populist rabble-rouser" with a "take-no-prisoners mind-set," while the Philadelphia Daily News labeled him "a progressive powerhouse." The American Prospect said Sirota is "the kind of pundit you'd like to have on your side in a knife fight and wouldn't want to cross in a dark alley." Syndicated columnist Molly Ivins said, "Sirota is a new-generation populist who instinctively understands that the only real questions are 'Who's getting screwed?' and 'Who's doing the screwing?'"

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