A review by alxsrbraun
The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore: A Story of American Rage by Jared Yates Sexton

3.0

I was excited to read The People Are Going to Rise, because I, like many other people who are reading this book I'm sure, follow Jared Yates Sexton on Twitter and followed his reporting during the last election cycle. However, I can't say that the book lived up to its promise for me. Rather than analyzing the rage felt by many Americans, Sexton's book is more of a rehash of his reporting from the election. Due in part to Sexton's own reporting during the election (and the work of other great journalists who covered campaign events during the election), I was already aware of much of what this book contains. The book unfortunately didn't tell me anything I didn't already know and was so light on analysis of the events contained therein that it had a feel of reading a long article I'd read a while ago but was reading again to refresh myself on. I think what a lot of us are hoping for are books that explain the election or at least offer possible explanations, arguments, or theories. For me, The People Are Going to Rise was too light on that analysis. I didn't want to read about what Jared Yates Sexton saw at a campaign event during the election (I already knew that) - I wanted to read Jared Yates Sexton's opinions (based on the reporting he did during the election) about why what happened happened. Maybe other readers will get more from this book than I did. But I wanted more, and I'm not sure that this book adds to the conversation about the election in a meaningful way. (Additionally, the way the book was organized was a distraction to me and affected the flow of the book. And, as other reviewers have pointed out, there were several mistakes in the text that I was surprised weren't caught during the editing process.)