[A] progressive blogger has written what’s being billed as the first “major book” on Senator Bernie Sanders to come out since he announced his run for President. “The Essential Bernie Sanders and His Vision for America” will be released by Chelsea Green Publishing, a White River Junction-based company on Sept. 8.
Much like the famous release of Barack Obama’s platform in his book, “Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” which came out two years before his landslide victory at the polls, “The Essential Bernie Sanders” is also a platform-centered book. The narrative is framed by stories about Sanders’ 35-year-long public career.
Using statements and votes by Sanders, Jonathan Tasini, a New York writer and blogger on the economy, lays out the candidate’s presidential agenda. It details the “key issues” drawing people to the campaign: health care, free higher ed, wealth distribution, financial reforms and rebuilding the middle class.
The book appears to be unrestrained in its adulation of Sanders and his work, based on the press release from Chelsea Green.
“Sanders’ common sense, populist message is resonating with Democrats, Republicans, independents, as well as ordinary working- and middle-class Americans from all walks of life, including millennials, seniors, veterans, immigrants, environmentalists, union workers, and more,” the company’s website reads.
Chelsea Green also cited the company’s Sanders-cred as a “Vermont-based, independent, and not owned by a multinational corporation or billionaires.” Chelsea Green became employee-owned in 2012; and “Sanders has long been a champion of employee ownership.”
Margo Baldwin, the company’s president and publisher, endorsed Sanders’ presidential campaign in the release: “This book lays out how we can reform our current political, social, and economic systems, topics that Chelsea Green has been publishing books on for more than 30 years.”
Former political journalist Shay Totten, who first covered Sanders himself as a reporter in 1994, edited the book in-house. Called a “crash book” in the publishing world, it will be printed less than eight weeks after the manuscript was turned in.
“It’s fast-paced, and you’re dealing with turnaround times in days and weeks not months, which is the normal trajectory for a printed book,” said Totten by e-mail, about the swift editing process. “It was also fun to work closely with such a smart, savvy author who’s covered Bernie and Bernie’s issues for as long as I have, if not longer.”
Totten, a former editorial director at the company, previously edited several books including the New York Times best-seller “The End of America,” by Naomi Wolf. Prior to returning to the company in 2011 he was a political columnist for Seven Days, a local alternative weekly.
Reflecting on this project, his first as an editor since re-joining the company as a communications director, he said the book reveals what he learned as a reporter.
“What it also proved is something that the Vermont media only knows too well, which is that his message has been pretty consistent for the past 30 years,” he said. “It seems like it’s only the rest of the country that’s catching up to us.”
A run of 50,000 copies of the book arrives at stores the day after Labor Day, which also happens to be Sanders’ 74th birthday. One heck of a birthday gift for Bernie.
“Not a bad coincidence,” said Totten. “Perhaps we should deliver it to him with some candles.”
