The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore

Praise for The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore Named a Best Book of 2017 (The Coil) A Best Book by Hoosier Authors in 2017 (Indianapolis Monthly) “An impressionistic and often disturbing account of the 2016 presidential race . . . Sexton grapples with the Trump campaign from the perspective of the crowds reveling in the candidate’s presence and message. It is a useful vantage point given the increasingly blatant bigotry in the months since the election . . . This book reveals the incremental nature of public displays of hatred, growing from harsh chants and bumper stickers to, say, an open and unmasked gathering of white supremacists in Charlottesville . . . [His] dispatches are bracing.” —The Washington Post “With a novelist’s flair for the dramatic scene and evocative detail, Sexton expertly marries the quotidian tedium of the campaign trail (so many hotel room beers) and the outlandish circumstances of this particular election season with his astute observations about our polarized national condition.” —Salon “Jared Yates Sexton, previously a minor–league pundit, is now making an outsider’s case for having penned one of the important books of the 2016 presidential race. The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore gets outside the iron ring of microphones that surround, suffocate, and trivialize campaign journalism.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “First of all, this is the best book title of 2017, hands down. Second, and more importantly, this is the book to read if you want to understand what the hell happened in the United States in 2016. If you follow Sexton on Twitter (and you should), you know he brings a sharp eye, fierce intellect, and resilient capacity for surprise to the problem of American political life. And that’s just 140 characters at a time. Just imagine what he can do with 300+ pages.” —Bookriot “The People Are Going to Rise is a comprehensive chronicle of the 2016 campaign from the margins . . . Even with the fresh–hell fatigue of following the resulting administration, and with that campaign still in recent memory, revisiting it with Sexton lets you see the horror anew, with a deeper sense of its consequences. And as the water level rises higher on the shore, Sexton continues to be a dutiful correspondent.” —Black Warrior Review “A ground–level account, sticking close to Sexton and his increasing miseries as he wades into the festering sewer of the 2016 election. The unique perspective, eye–deep in hell, is equal parts mortifying and edifying. Sexton measures the depths of depravity as he goes, but reminds us that these depths have always existed in the nation.” —The Coil “The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore encapsulates what this election was and what it meant to be watching. It shows us how low our society is still capable of going and how a large portion is fighting back. This book is important for us now, but it will be imperative for the generations of the future.” —The Big Smoke “Sexton writes as a reporter who experienced both life and politics in the 2016 campaign. His book is excellent . . . [It] tries to make sense of a country trying to make sense of itself.” —Winnipeg Free Press “Sexton’s first–person account is both candidly relatable and viscerally frightening . . . [His] seamless blending of his reporter’s objectivity with the personal evaluations of a voter who has skin in the game yields trenchant analysis . . . Sexton’s is a critical and important voice in helping readers understand the cultural and political sea change the election created.