Table of Contents

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE: Ugly Vibrations in These United States vii
PART ONE: SLEEP OF REASON BREEDS MONSTERS
CHAPTER 1: Canaries in the Coal Mine 3
CHAPTER 2: The American Dream Is Dead 21
CHAPTER 3: Nine Dead in Charleston 29
CHAPTER 4: The Ego Is Not Master in Its Own House 43
CHAPTER 5: They’re Tryin’ to Win This Thing 57
CHAPTER 6: Life Outside the Cloud 69
CHAPTER 7: The End of an Uneasy Truce 83
CHAPTER 8: The Joke Is Over 93

PART TWO: THE SUMMER OF RAGE
CHAPTER 9: An American Horror Story 107
CHAPTER 10: The Road to Ohio 119
CHAPTER 11: There Will Be Blood 133
CHAPTER 12: A Nation Forever on the Brink 143
CHAPTER 13: When the Devil’s at Your Door
the republican national convention 151
CHAPTER 14: The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore
the democratic national convention 169
CHAPTER 15: Against All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic 181
CHAPTER 16: The Green Party National Convention 191

PART THREE: A NEW KIND OF RELIGION
CHAPTER 17: A Voice for the People 203
CHAPTER 18: A Tiger by Its Tail 217
CHAPTER 19: The Cult of the Movement 229
CHAPTER 20: We Come to the End 239
CHAPTER 21: Anatomy of a Car Crash 249
CHAPTER 22: Waiting for the End of the World 263
EPILOGUE: We the People 279
AFTERWORD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 289
NOTES 291

Promotional Information

About the Author

Jared Yates Sexton is the author of The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore. He is a contributing political writer at Salon, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, and elsewhere. He is an associate professor of creative writing at Georgia Southern University. You can follow him at @JYSexton.

Reviews

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

“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

“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

“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

“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.” —Booklist (starred review)

“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

“A leftist counterweight to Hillbilly Elegy, laced with shots of Hunter S. Thompson . . . A useful snapshot of a tumultuous presidential race.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Sexton's reporting provides a unique nuts–and–bolts look at the campaigns, and his eyewitness reports of the aggressive displays at Trump rallies are both terrifying and fascinating.” —Publishers Weekly

“This is the post–campaign book I was waiting for. Nothing else has shown me so clearly the ruptures in our culture aligned with Trump's candidacy, or even the nature of the way we choose a president. Essential reading for understanding this country now and going forward.” —Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel 

“Jared Yates Sexton didn't just randomly become a phenomenon in his chronicling of Donald Trump's fans and foibles, it happened because he's our Jane Goodall to Trump's Deplorables. His work has been indispensable to those who have tried to understand our times, with an honesty lacking among most of our mainstream media. Read this book.” —Cliff Schecter, bestselling author of The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him—And Why Independents Shouldn't and a columnist for The Daily Beast

“Jared Yates Sexton ventured into the dark heart of American partisanship and emerged with a warning that all of us would do well to heed. Thoughtful, compassionate, and exceptionally brave, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how—and why—our country turned on itself.” —Bronwen Dickey, author of Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon