I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review. This is a book we need more now than ever. Forget what you learned in history class about William Jennings Bryan- this is the book you should be reading for the sake of the Republic.

Excellent review of what populism means, as illustrated by various political movements in American history. It also distinguishes between populism and demagoguery, lest the two be confused. Frank's message is directed largely at the Democratic Party, which has strayed from the [economic] populism characterized by the New Deal (Franklin D. Roosevelt) and the Civil Rights movement (Martin Luther King, Jr.). Borderline 5-stars.

Here’s a novel idea: maybe people know what’s best for themselves.Author of Listen Liberal, Frank offers another scathing analysis of not only the switch and bait of the modern day Republican Party but a timely repudiation of the liberal intelligentsia. Here we get a refocusing of populism. The author asserts that the current definitions are wrong referring to the populist part of the 1890s. I’m not convinced it matters at this point if we’re all using the term populism wrong but his point is so...

The People, No is a liberal version of a New Class War by Lind. The history on the turn of 19th century appears cherry picked and mid 20th century commentary ignores Conservative Coalition which allowed for Southern Democrat rule in the southern state and Democrats maintaining a majority in house and senate. Frank goes through 1930 and 40s economics without mentioning Keynes and ignores stagflation effects of working class in 1970s. The People, No leaves out FDR’s attack on the judiciary and the...

A very interesting book that attempts to argue: (1) that modern Democratic Party perceptions of populism are wrong to say that populism is necessarily related to anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian movementsand (2) that populism (particularly embracing economic justice and moving away from elite consensus) are the ways to advance liberal political goals.I find the historical survey in in the book fascinating and enlightening, but don't think his point (1) is valid. It doesn't matter what populi...

If you are at all a bit of a jerk like me, the indiscriminate use of certain words not only makes you cringe, it also makes you instantly evaluate whether or not the user of them could ever be your friend. Like kicking your dog, or reserving a special corner of your library (or "heart") for the "novels" of the "philosopher" Ayn Rand, the deployment of words and phrases like begs the question, moderate Democrat, or even impact (as a verb*, or do-able**, O my would-be, could-be brothers and siste...

The best piece on the topic, by Matt Taibbi: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/kansas-...This book is a worthy sequel to Listen, Liberal, and an excellent example for the "know your history" argument. (view spoiler)[They did not listen and nobody bothers with anything that might have happened before 2000sih. (hide spoiler)]Frank gives us a very astute analysis of the current situation, and how it got here (starting with 1890s). It's all very depressing, with some unexpected rays of hope and faith in...

Thomas Frank has discovered that the term populism is fungible. Since its invention in the late 1800s, when it meant the native intelligence of the populace at large to correct the ills and corruption of the USA, it has been hijacked numerous times in different eras. Like everything else in the universe, it doesn’t stay fixed for long.Populism started out as anger over property taxes, injustice, corruption and inequality in the Gilded Age, all of which were actually worse in the 1890s than they

Update, 8/17/20: Ever since I listened to an interview with Thomas Frank, I've been noticing that he's right: in the mainstream, the word "populism" has (incorrectly) become equated with right-wing authoritarianism, as in this piece in The Guardian:https://www.theguardian.com/world/com...In this writer's conception, populists are possessors of arcane knowledge:"Populists know from neuroscience that serving up dopamine is one of the best ways to keep our easily bored brains hooked..."Furthermore,...

This was a really good history of the populist movement and its erasure. I think Frank makes some oversimplistic assertions on some fronts (on racism, it's not super clearcut; on anti-science, he completely leaves out Bryan's scopes monkey trial defense), but he's right that populism has gotten an overly bad wrap because it does threaten the status quo. In a way, I was hoping that someone would write this book because it is an update to C Van Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow and that on...

Thomas Frank deserves more credit than he gets in left-leaning circles. Much of his reputation comes from his 2004 breakout book, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” This is a problem for two reasons. One is that while it’s a fun, fast book, it’s not Frank at his best. The other is that a lot of people, many of whom should know better, seemingly failed to read beyond the title. “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” isn’t a screed at the expense of the people of the Sunflower State (Frank himself is a Ka...

TL;DR Thomas Frank’s The People, No should be required reading for VP Joe Biden’s campaign and anyone wanting to know how the Democratic party abdicated the working class. Highly recommended!Disclaimer: I received a free eARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.To read more reviews like this, please, visit Primmlife.com. Review: The People, No One of the pleasures of reading non-fiction is finding new authors directly in the text. Earlier this year, I read Matt Taibbi’s Hate

1.5 / 5.0I think I would probably qualify as one of Thomas Frank's elites. Among the other privileges I hold in life, I work as a government attorney and generally value science and technology as means to address issues, rather than bottom-up solutions proffered by the people. But, then again, what exactly does Thomas Frank think populism is? In "The People, No," Thomas Frank offers a peripatetic history of populism (and anti-populism) in America, without truly defining the term. Is it a hodgepo...

With his usual verve, Frank skewers the elite voices of condescension that vilify the egalitarian and democratic strivings of working people. In so doing, he offers a passionate defense of populism, which he reveals as a deep and wide political tradition that remains as essential as ever for the hopes of a more just and equitable society.Charles Postel, author of Equality: an American dilemma, 1866–1896Political commentator Frank (Rendezvous with Oblivion) urges liberals to reclaim ‘the high gro...

Thomas Frank’s new book, “The People, NO,” a reversal of the title of Carl Sandburg’s poem, is written his typical style, full of an appropriate frustration and passion. The history is important; I leaned the most in the chapter about the Populists of the 1890s. In the racism vs. economic anxiety battle for the correct interpretation of the disastrous 2016 election, Frank is decidedly on the side of economic anxiety, but he also points frequently, throughout history, to the trans-racial populist...

Less useful than I'd hoped. The topic is certainly very important to explore, and worth exploring, even if this has already been done in great detail by authors Frank probably wouldn't read, like Marx, and Michael Parenti in the US context. That said, Frank doesn't go into how the anti-populists went about their destroying the populist movements of their times, and as a result, the book doesn't really have a great deal to add over Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the Peopl...

Parts of this book really frustrated me. That's primarily due to the fact that I'm pretty familiar with the scholarly literature on populism--both the 19th-century People's Party variety as well as the contemporary discourse about it--and Frank's tendency throughout this book to use that literature to build a polemic sometimes struck me as unfair or even actually unhelpful to his argument. But he does have an argument, and it is one that I strongly agree with, and so as the book went along and I...

I didn't enjoy this one very much.Would not recommend.1.9/5

Thomas Frank is probably the best contemporary writer on American politics today, and his latest work, TPN, builds to some degree off his previous work, but works just fine as a stand-alone. Frank's focus is, not surprisingly, contemporary 'anti-populism', something 'in the air' so to speak and used by media and the cultural elite to basically denigrate anything to do with Trump. To counter this narrative, Frank explores the history of populism in the USA, from its origins in Kansas in the late

I have learned lots from this book. First of all, that populism does have noble origins, in Kansas, 1891, when We the People was still a noble concept. when the average citizen was, on average, a plus to his country.Populism has been kidnapped. Kidnapped by those who have recognised the usefulness of its recipes, and used it to promote the new nativist movements we see the world over, centred on dishing out identity dreams. The Trump, Bolsonaro, Orban, Duterte of this planet.Fighting these movem...