“Resist we must, resist we will—and as this volume powerfully reminds us, in so doing we are acting on the deepest American instincts.” —Bill McKibben, author of Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance
Across cities, towns, and campuses, Americans are grappling with overwhelming challenges and the daily fallout from the most authoritarian White House policies in recent memory. In an inspiring and compelling narrative history, Jeff Biggers reframes today’s battles as a continuum of a vibrant American tradition. Resistance is a masterful chronicle of the arduous, courageous, and often squabbling resistance movements that insured the benchmarks of our democracy—movements that served on the front lines of the American Revolution, the defense of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the defeat of fascism during World War II, and various civil rights struggles.
Legendary historian Studs Terkel praised Biggers’s The United States of Appalachia, now in its eighth printing, as a “how-to book” in the tradition of the American Revolution. With Resistance, Biggers opens a new window into American history and its meaning today. In a brilliant recovery of many unsung heroes, including Revolutionary forefather Thomas Paine, Resistance is a provocative reconsideration of the American Revolution, bringing alive early Native American, African American, and immigrant struggles, women’s rights, and pioneering environmental justice movements. With lucidity, wit and meticulousness, Biggers unfolds one of our country’s best kept secrets: in dealing with the most challenging issues of every generation, resistance to duplicitous civil authority has defined our quintessential American story.
Read an excerpt in Lapham’s Quarterly: The Literary Instigator of the American Revolution
Interview with Marc Steiner, Real News Network: The History of American Resistance
Interview on KJZZ NPR-Phoenix: Reclaiming American Resistance