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Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt

Contributors

By Chris Hedges

By Joe Sacco

Formats and Prices

Price

$19.99

Format

Format:

  1. Trade Paperback $19.99
  2. ebook $12.99

“A profoundly disquieting (and downright shocking) portrait of modern America” (The Times) that takes readers across the country to discover the toll of capitalism 

In 2010, Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges and award-winning cartoonist and journalist Joe Sacco set out to take a look at the sacrifice zones, those areas in America that have been offered up for exploitation in the name of profit, progress, and technological advancement. They wanted to show in words and drawings what life looks like in places where the marketplace rules without constraints, where human beings and the natural world are used and then discarded to maximize profit. Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt is the searing account of their travels.

The book starts in the western plains, where Native Americans were sacrificed in the giddy race for land and empire. It moves to the old manufacturing centers and coal fields that fueled the industrial revolution, but now lie depleted and in decay. It follows the steady downward spiral of American labor into the nation’s produce fields and ends in Zuccotti Park where a new generation revolts against a corporate state that has handed to the young an economic, political, cultural and environmental catastrophe.

  • "Sacco's sections are uniformly brilliant. The tone is controlled, the writing smart, the narration neutral…. This is an important book.”
    New York Times Book Review
  • "An unabashedly polemic, angry manifesto that is certain to open eyes, intensify outrage and incite argument about corporate greed. Through immersion reportage and graphic narrative, the duo illuminate the human and environmental devastation in those communities, with the warning that no one is immune. A call for a new American revolution, passionately proclaimed.”
    Kirkus, Starred Review
  • "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt is a journey through contemporary American misery and what can be done to change the course, interpreted through the eyes of two of today's most relevant literary journalists. The graphics illustrate what words alone cannot, capturing a past as it's told, where there's no longer anything left to photograph.”
    Asbury Park Press
  • "The book is a primer for every American who is overwhelmed by the uncertainty of the stock market, who wonders where America's muscle went, and how much heavy lifting our kids will face.” 
    Seattle Times
  • "This is a book that should warm the hearts of political activists such as Naomi Klein or the nonagenerian Pete Seeger. And cause apoplexy among the Tea Party and its fellow travelers. Sure, it's a polemic, but it's a polemic with a human face.”
    Globe and Mail
  • "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt is, without question, the most profoundly disquieting (and downright shocking) portrait of modern America in recent years, and one that is essential reading for anyone wanting to comprehend the quotidian struggle of what sociologists called the underclass. To describe the book as Dickensian in its horror-show reports of frontline industrial decrepitude and socio-economic dysfunction is to engage in understatement. Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt is unapologetically combative and profoundly J'accuse. And though many a conservative think-tanker could try to punch holes in its arguments no one can remain unmoved or unsettled by its brilliantly documented reportage from the precipice of a society that prefers to turn a blind eye to its nightmarish underside.”

     
    The Times of London
  • "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt  is as moving a portrait of poverty."
    Boston Globe
  • "This searing indictment of our unsustainable society is unsettling. To keep our chance for dignity, we must do our part to champion the organizers and whistleblowers, committee members and protesters. Amen. Pass the word.”
    Brooklyn Rail
  •  "A bleak, fist-shaking look at the effects of global capitalism in the United States.”
     
    Joe Gross, Austin American-Statesman
  • "As quixotic as the quest may seem, Days of Destruction brings the rhetoric and the reality into a nobler focus after a very disturbing tour.”

     
    The Star-Ledger (New Jersey)

On Sale
Apr 8, 2014
Page Count
320 pages
Publisher
Bold Type Books
ISBN-13
9781568588247

Chris Hedges

About the Author

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He spent nearly two decades as a correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, with fifteen years at the New York Times. He is the author of numerous bestselling books, including Empire of Illusion; Death of the Liberal Class; War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning; and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with Joe Sacco. He writes a weekly column for the online magazine Truthdig. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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