superdilettante's review against another edition
4.0
I had never really given much thought to the way that modern living--that is to say, being immersed in a for-profit, capital-over-all society--affects the way we are trained to see worth and value. This book is about the things deemed expendable, whether they be communities, land, or entire classes of people. It was a wake-up call that hurt, but was brutally necessary for me.
lizmart88's review against another edition
4.0
At once depressing and uplifting. Excellent journalism and storytelling at its finest. The narrative of 4 movements and/or oppressed people's creates a startling picture of the truth of the American dream. Some may consider it extremely leftist, but I think of it as totally honest portrayal of how corporations are stripping the American people of dignity and opportunity from the farm workers in Florida to native americans in pine Ridge. Unfortunately, while the authors see hope in occupy wall Street (the book was published in 2012), I know the true ending of that protest.
Eye opening read for any American.
Eye opening read for any American.
averyferg105's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
The entire first 80% of the book was amazing but the last chapter just lost me man.
ljohnston931's review against another edition
3.0
This book could've been so good. I loved the stories and it did make me think differently about injustice in America. But instead of letting the facts of these people's lives speak for themselves, Hedges keeps trying to rile the reader up with overgeneralized, dramatic statements. ("Even our corporate overlords no longer believe the words they utter.") The last chapter is kinda a mess, overglorifying the Occupy movement (the point is that we don't have demands!!!) and just going beyond what the facts support. But, it was still great to hear stories from people who do not usually get to tell them
mhall's review against another edition
4.0
Devastating rhetoric and searing illustrations by Joe Sacco. This pulls together the devastation faced by different communities in America in four different compelling and specific stories about Native Americans in South Dakota, coal miners in West Virginia, African Americans in a blighted part of New Jersey, and immigrant farm workers in Florida. The connections between these stories become really clear, although the final story about the Occupy movement is maybe a little naïve. Still, incredibly moving.
lauren_powerup's review against another edition
4.0
I will not engage in the current round of "you're doing it wrong" lefty criticism that seems to be on the rise in recent years. I am weary of reading critiques in so many progressive rags which rip apart the campaigns or initiatives of others. Critique is good, debate is good but c'mon can we get to what we should be doing and away from the ceaseless lists of "what we should not be doing".
I have not written a book which exposes the absolute horror visited upon various communities by our corporate leaders. Therefore I will not spend this review nitpicking all of things that I did not like. I am glad that Hedges and Sacco wrote and published this. And they must have readers for whom this is their first exposure to these issues. My "Yay you" and (conscious choice on conjunction used) is, I wish there was a bit more of the Sacco comic narratives and a bit more connect the historical dots/corporate policy dots from Hedges. Hedges' polemics may wear a bit on some but shouldn't it all make us this screaming mad?
I have not written a book which exposes the absolute horror visited upon various communities by our corporate leaders. Therefore I will not spend this review nitpicking all of things that I did not like. I am glad that Hedges and Sacco wrote and published this. And they must have readers for whom this is their first exposure to these issues. My "Yay you" and (conscious choice on conjunction used) is, I wish there was a bit more of the Sacco comic narratives and a bit more connect the historical dots/corporate policy dots from Hedges. Hedges' polemics may wear a bit on some but shouldn't it all make us this screaming mad?
kosr's review against another edition
5.0
I have to share a bizarre story that occurred around the reading of this book.
Being from London England means Hedges books aren't readily available from bookstores (I saw his latest work America: The Farewell Tour in Foyles bookstore on Tottenham Court Road once; that's it) and the reality is second hand websites or overseas shipping by request to a UK bookstore are the answer to the desire to purchase his work. It should be mentioned that if Hedges isn't mainstream in the US then he really isn't here in the UK. He's not massively well known here at all (a shame).
With regards to this book, I have actually read a number of Hedges other work and decided to plow into this next one by purchasing it online around mid-2019. After quite some time the book didn't arrive and I was refunded. These American published books take a while to arrive and usually I have to build the enthusiasm to make the purchase considering the high price and shipping costs, so I moved onto other books and lost the imperative to dig into another project Hedges undertook. I'll admit this was the one book I'd heard really good stuff about and I'd wanted to read it for a while.
Fast forward to Summer 2020, just after the first Covid19 lockdown had ended in UK and I'm visiting the Midlands in the Lake District with some other people. We're staying up in quiet village in Sedbergh in what really was the middle of nowhere for a couple of days. About a day into our stay, I'm walking with someone down a street and we pass a small converted bus shelter that's now housing a food collection box, and a very small library of the towns used books in a window case on the shelter wall (overwhelmingly rubbish fiction and local geography / map books). I have a habit of always keeping an eye on any secondhand bookstores of any denomination as I've found some gems in unlikely places. This was no exception, so I decided to scan the books for anything interesting.
Well, I'm thinking you've guessed what I found. But let me just preemptively explain how insane it was that I found Days of Destruction Days of Revolt, a book about the worse affected areas of the US by unfettered capitalism, in an unassuming farm village in the Midlands of the UK (as if that's not absurd enough). This book was utterly alone amongst garbage fiction, tucked away top left of the shelf by someone; almost too easy to miss. It was a hardback first edition with its cover jacket in pretty good condition also. Furthermore, this was written in 2012 (so no excuse of being a 'new book' in circulation) fully eight years ago, by someone not very well known even in the US let alone the UK. The chances of finding this book - a book I'd recently mentioned to the person I was walking with that I'd wished I had gotten the chance to read not long prior - were just stupidly astronomical. So much so I stood there holding it in a kind of stupor for about fifteen seconds before showing the person I was walking with what I'd found (they were equally dumbfounded).
If this had been some other book this might have seemed a slight overreaction. Even if I'd found this in a London charity bookstore (which would still be rare) I would've held back from typing this all out. But the fact that all the above mentioned set of circumstances led to me finding this book is, frankly, borderline freaky. I'd encourage anyone to type in Sedbergh, UK into Google maps to see how out of town it is; its practically nestled between a bunch of hills and mountains.
I would've be excited to know there was a left leaning Hedges reader in the remote town of Sedbergh (maybe this would be where the revolution would start in the UK, right?) if the inside of the book wasn't annotated by the previous reader (clearly the one who dropped the book in the bus shelter) criticising every page in the book. It definitely added to the flavour of the whole event, and my favourite annotation was at the end of the chapter 'Days of Siege' in which Hedges quotes a poem he left on the tomb of the author who wrote said poem in Camdem (US, not London Camden).
Hedges leaves a poem quote to end the chapter, and written by the previous reader - in quite beautiful handwriting - in pencil next to the poem quote was: The Narcissistic and the Anecdotal.
Yanked me right out of the harrowing chapter on US poverty right into the previous British readers clear distaste for anything melodramatic or poetic. Beautiful.
As for the book? Along with America: The Farwell Tour, this book is definitely Hedges strongest work. Harrowing and beautiful, Joe Saccos artwork makes it even more riveting to read also.
Being from London England means Hedges books aren't readily available from bookstores (I saw his latest work America: The Farewell Tour in Foyles bookstore on Tottenham Court Road once; that's it) and the reality is second hand websites or overseas shipping by request to a UK bookstore are the answer to the desire to purchase his work. It should be mentioned that if Hedges isn't mainstream in the US then he really isn't here in the UK. He's not massively well known here at all (a shame).
With regards to this book, I have actually read a number of Hedges other work and decided to plow into this next one by purchasing it online around mid-2019. After quite some time the book didn't arrive and I was refunded. These American published books take a while to arrive and usually I have to build the enthusiasm to make the purchase considering the high price and shipping costs, so I moved onto other books and lost the imperative to dig into another project Hedges undertook. I'll admit this was the one book I'd heard really good stuff about and I'd wanted to read it for a while.
Fast forward to Summer 2020, just after the first Covid19 lockdown had ended in UK and I'm visiting the Midlands in the Lake District with some other people. We're staying up in quiet village in Sedbergh in what really was the middle of nowhere for a couple of days. About a day into our stay, I'm walking with someone down a street and we pass a small converted bus shelter that's now housing a food collection box, and a very small library of the towns used books in a window case on the shelter wall (overwhelmingly rubbish fiction and local geography / map books). I have a habit of always keeping an eye on any secondhand bookstores of any denomination as I've found some gems in unlikely places. This was no exception, so I decided to scan the books for anything interesting.
Well, I'm thinking you've guessed what I found. But let me just preemptively explain how insane it was that I found Days of Destruction Days of Revolt, a book about the worse affected areas of the US by unfettered capitalism, in an unassuming farm village in the Midlands of the UK (as if that's not absurd enough). This book was utterly alone amongst garbage fiction, tucked away top left of the shelf by someone; almost too easy to miss. It was a hardback first edition with its cover jacket in pretty good condition also. Furthermore, this was written in 2012 (so no excuse of being a 'new book' in circulation) fully eight years ago, by someone not very well known even in the US let alone the UK. The chances of finding this book - a book I'd recently mentioned to the person I was walking with that I'd wished I had gotten the chance to read not long prior - were just stupidly astronomical. So much so I stood there holding it in a kind of stupor for about fifteen seconds before showing the person I was walking with what I'd found (they were equally dumbfounded).
If this had been some other book this might have seemed a slight overreaction. Even if I'd found this in a London charity bookstore (which would still be rare) I would've held back from typing this all out. But the fact that all the above mentioned set of circumstances led to me finding this book is, frankly, borderline freaky. I'd encourage anyone to type in Sedbergh, UK into Google maps to see how out of town it is; its practically nestled between a bunch of hills and mountains.
I would've be excited to know there was a left leaning Hedges reader in the remote town of Sedbergh (maybe this would be where the revolution would start in the UK, right?) if the inside of the book wasn't annotated by the previous reader (clearly the one who dropped the book in the bus shelter) criticising every page in the book. It definitely added to the flavour of the whole event, and my favourite annotation was at the end of the chapter 'Days of Siege' in which Hedges quotes a poem he left on the tomb of the author who wrote said poem in Camdem (US, not London Camden).
Hedges leaves a poem quote to end the chapter, and written by the previous reader - in quite beautiful handwriting - in pencil next to the poem quote was: The Narcissistic and the Anecdotal.
Yanked me right out of the harrowing chapter on US poverty right into the previous British readers clear distaste for anything melodramatic or poetic. Beautiful.
As for the book? Along with America: The Farwell Tour, this book is definitely Hedges strongest work. Harrowing and beautiful, Joe Saccos artwork makes it even more riveting to read also.