Overview

The eighteen essays and speeches in Take Hold of Our History render a manifesto – a call to remember, redeem, and embrace the American radical story and tradition in favor of cultivating American historical memory and imagination and making America radical once again. For too long we have allowed the right to hijack the past and suppress, efface, lie about, and/or appropriate the essentially radical story of America from the struggles of the Revolution to those of the Age of Roosevelt and the 1960s. And no less tragically, we on the left, apparently haunted by the worst of our national experience, have turned our back on our own story and deferred to the tales of conservatives and reactionaries. Fleeing from the past, we merely compound the tragedies and ironies of American history, for we turn our backs on both the nation’s democratic creed and radical imperative, but also the struggles from the bottom up, the struggles in which working people and others have laid hold of America’s revolutionary promise and succeeded in making the United States freer, more equal and more democratic, at times, radically so. As Bill Moyers put it in 2008: “Here in the first decade of the twenty-first century the story that becomes America’s dominant narrative will shape our collective imagination and our politics for a long time.” The time has come for us to advance that narrative.

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9781789043556

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Reviews

Harvey Kaye does it again, with a brilliant, historically-grounded, deeply insightful prescription to our nation's ills - grounded in what we already know works! Read, share, and act!--Thom Hartmann ""The Thom Hartmann Show "" Harvey Kaye is our essential and always engaging guide to owning our progressive history. America has a rich progressive social-democratic history that has been obscured by the Right and all too often ignored by the Left. But now, as Bernie Sanders leads a social-democratic presidential campaign, we have an opportunity to assert a new politics. Whatever your politics are, you need to know this history and argument.--Michael Brooks ""The Michael Brooks Show "" Harvey Kaye doesn't just write about history, he uses history to show exactly where we are today - and where we could take it. He has the wisdom of a sage, the passion of a prophet, and the intelligence of a true patriot. And he writes with compassion and guts.--John Fugelsang ""Host of SiriusXM's Tell Me Everything"" Standing at the intersection of the past and the future stands Harvey Kaye, our great radical historian. Kaye practices his craft in the tradition of E.P. Thompson and Howard Zinn, turning our attention to neglected individuals, moments and messages that illuminate our understanding of who we have been and who we are. Yet, Harvey Kaye brings to his scholarship a distinctive academic commitment, as readers of this fine book will quickly and surely recognize. He believes, correctly, that our revolutionary past provides the truest evidence that another world is possible.--John Nichols ""The Nation""

Standing at the intersection of the past and the future stands Harvey Kaye, our great radical historian. Kaye practices his craft in the tradition of E.P. Thompson and Howard Zinn, turning our attention to neglected individuals, moments and messages that illuminate our understanding of who we have been and who we are. Yet, Harvey Kaye brings to his scholarship a distinctive academic commitment, as readers of this fine book will quickly and surely recognize. He believes, correctly, that our revolutionary past provides the truest evidence that another world is possible.--John Nichols The Nation Harvey Kaye doesn't just write about history, he uses history to show exactly where we are today - and where we could take it. He has the wisdom of a sage, the passion of a prophet, and the intelligence of a true patriot. And he writes with compassion and guts.--John Fugelsang Host of SiriusXM's Tell Me Everything Harvey Kaye is our essential and always engaging guide to owning our progressive history. America has a rich progressive social-democratic history that has been obscured by the Right and all too often ignored by the Left. But now, as Bernie Sanders leads a social-democratic presidential campaign, we have an opportunity to assert a new politics. Whatever your politics are, you need to know this history and argument.--Michael Brooks The Michael Brooks Show Harvey Kaye does it again, with a brilliant, historically-grounded, deeply insightful prescription to our nation's ills - grounded in what we already know works! Read, share, and act!--Thom Hartmann The Thom Hartmann Show

Author Information

Harvey J. Kaye is the Ben & Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. An award-winning author, he has published sixteen books, contributed articles and essays to a host of major newspapers and periodicals, and appeared regularly on television, radio, and podcast programs such as Moyers and Company, the Thom Hartmann Show, and the Michael Brooks Show. He lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA.

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