Bernie for Burlington - by Dan Chiasson (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This utterly captivating symphonic story of city, a visionary, and the way our politics changed forever is told through the very specific people of Burlington, beginning with Dan Chiasson's own mall-punk friends of the 1980s: in a video that would go viral decades later in 2020, they engaged with the itinerant carpenter turned socialist mayoral candidate, and there in that food court, the seeds of everything that was Bernie were sown. Dan, uniquely placed to bring a deep insider's perspective, knew all the players: the conservative French-Canadian Catholics whose great grandparents had worked in the mills (his own); the puppeteers and hippies and NYC transplants looking for land and "authenticity" in Vermont; the developers involved in the era's Robert Moses urban-renewal schemes; the corrupt old-school Dems at their table in the local dive; and even Ben and Jerry who became Ben and Jerry's right there in town. They all made up the mosh pit of the Burlington that Bernie captivated, running on the slogan "Burlington is not for sale," to become the modern era's first socialist mayor, intimate with his constituents across workers, cops, lefties, and the little old ladies who organized their streets; he also boasted a foreign policy, a sudden national profile, and a bullhorn to speak to Ronald Reagan. In the tradition of J. Anthony Lukas's Common Ground and the documentary films of Frederick Wiseman, this epic of American city life delves into the gossip--and the exhilaration--around Bernie's unlikely rise, as we watch an American place transformed one diner coffee, one neighborhood door-knock at a time. Full of Sanders himself, reflecting and raging, hitting his themes, forging alliances with all comers, this is a mesmerizing portrait of a politician, a place, and a movement that would change America"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

The early days and inexorable rise of the young Bernie Sanders, the one-of-a-kind visionary who changed American politics forever, told by a son of the People's Republic of Burlington, Vermont

In this symphonic origin story of an era-defining politician, Dan Chiasson, a Burlington native who had a ringside seat to Bernie Sanders's development, reconstructs the rise of an American icon. With in-depth reporting and remarkable remembered scenes, Chiasson tracks a faint political signal that traveled from the Vermont communes, hardluck neighborhoods, traditional businesses, and county fairs to the town meetings and ballot boxes of his home state, and finally to Washington, D.C., to transform our national political landscape.

Sanders, insisting on a socialist platform that hasn't changed to this day, defied a corrupt Democratic machine to find his coalition among Burlington's often feuding communities: the conservative French-Canadian Catholics whose grandparents and great-grandparents--including Chiasson's own--had worked in the mills; the puppeteers, hippies, and NYC transplants who'd moved to Vermont to find land and authenticity; the anti-nukers, activist nuns, baseball fans, developers, cops, and small businessmen like Ben and Jerry, who became Ben & Jerry's right there in town. Bernie captivated them all, running on the slogan "Burlington Is Not for Sale" to become the modern era's first socialist mayor, one who got the streets plowed but also boasted a foreign policy and a bullhorn to speak directly to Ronald Reagan.

In the tradition of J. Anthony Lukas's Common Ground, this people's epic shows us an American city transformed one diner coffee and one neighborhood door-knock at a time, even as the analog era wanes and a new digital politics appears on the horizon. Full of Sanders himself, reflecting and raging, hitting his themes, Bernie for Burlington is a mesmerizing portrait of a politician, a place, and a movement that would change America.

Review Quotes

One of Kirkus Reviews's "Most Anticipated Nonfiction of Spring 2026"

"The more I read of Dan Chiasson's book, the more moved I was by how absolutely unwavering Bernie's message has been across the many decades of his career." --Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home, on creating the cover art for Bernie for Burlington

"Story-telling has various eternal wellsprings: history and gossip, the local and the epic, jokes and legends. Bernie for Burlington orchestrates energy from all of the above in a wild variety of stories, voices and characters. At the center, Bernie Sanders of Brooklyn and Burlington is an important and unlikely hero, and Dan Chiasson of Burlington and American poetry is a masterful and unlikely narrator." --Robert Pinsky

"This is a book we need right now--a big, lovingly-woven, Whitmanesque wickerwork of grievances and glories, home truths and triumphs, about a Brooklyn kid and the city on the shore of Lake Champlain where he shaped his compassionate cause. Read it and you'll never think about local politics the same way again." --Nicholson Baker

"A fascinating portrait of hard-knocks Burlington, Vermont, and of its ingenious, enterprising, indefatigable socialist mayor, Bernie Sanders, who went from seat-of-the-pants "perennial candidate" to national fame." --Ian Frazier

"Two down-and-out characters--an unruly perennial fringe candidate and a decaying New England mill town--joined forces at an unpropitious political moment to create a left populism and new urbanism whose revitalizing influence is still growing nationwide. Dan Chiasson relates this Vermont fable with a historian's rigor, a poet's eye, and a memoirist's sharp evocations of time and place. I couldn't put it down." --Timothy Noah, staff writer at The New Republic and author of The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It

"The transformation of 'one small city, one small state' ignites a political revolution in this memoir and cultural history of a mass movement. With Bernie Sanders as the lens, Chiasson, a poet and literary critic, offers a genesis story about shifting identities in Burlington and Vermont, inexorably linked with Sanders's rise as a national political force. Written with the intimacy of a love letter to the author's hometown, its 500-plus pages are filled with Burlington characters, vignettes of Bernie being Bernie, and key inflection points that capture the consistency of Sanders's messaging and paint an unrivaled portrait of Vermont over the last 50 years." --Harvard Magazine

"In a detailed, rich profile of this iconic public figure, Chiasson takes readers from Sanders's Brooklyn childhood through his adolescent dreams of escape to the verdant wilderness of Vermont, years of activism and increasing local influence, and the successful 1990 congressional campaign that catapulted Sanders onto the national stage. . . . Chiasson is a great storyteller, effortlessly creating context and conveying nuance. . . . This amusing, provocative, painstaking, and wide-ranging political biography is sure to appeal to a wide audience." --Booklist (starred review)

"Few political books are this well written. . . . Elegant sentences, evocative scene setting, and insightful conclusions about Sanders's 'consistency' and durable message. . . . An observant, eloquent dual portrait of an uncommon public servant and his adopted home city." --Kirkus Reviews

"Ambitious. . . . illuminating. . . . [Bernie for Burlington] covers a massive amount of territory, including hot-button issues of Sanders's mayorship. . . and the author's own experiences growing up in Burlington. . . . Most intriguing is Chiasson's delineation of Sanders's outsider role within Vermont's counterculture . . . [which] developed a class-driven ideology unique even among his lefty milieu. This new vision became the nascent seed for today's socialist movement in the U.S., giving Chiasson's dense account some historical heft." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

DAN CHIASSON is the author of five books of poetry, including Bicentennial (2014) and The Math Campers (2020), and a book of literary criticism. A longtime contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, Chiasson is the Lorraine Chao Wang Professor of English and chair of the English Department at Wellesley College.