Necessary Trouble

Americans in Revolt

By: Sarah Jaffe

Narrated by: Amy Melissa Bentley

The 2008 financial crisis crystallized for people around the country the fact that something was wrong. Americans had already been losing faith in elites who had failed to protect them from crisis after crisis and disaster after disaster. After the collapse, we expected someone to have a solution but were inevitably disappointed. Instead, we got high and rising unemployment, foreclosures spiraling out of control, and, as the protest chant went, "banks got bailed out, we got sold out."

The spark was slow to start, but it has grown since. Tea Partiers challenged conservative politicians to keep their promises; Walmart and fast-food workers went on strike for a raise; Wall Street found itself Occupied; the deaths of unarmed young men touched off a 21st-century black freedom struggle. The movements swelled, intersected, and spread around the country, helped along by social media. At their core, they were all challenges to who wields power in the US, regardless of political allegiance.

Necessary Trouble offers listeners an understanding of today's new radicals - the troublemakers of all stripes who refuse to sit any longer on the sidelines and wait for things to improve.

©2016 Sarah Jaffe (P)2016 Tantor

The scam of neo liberal capitalism

An appropriate analysis in turbulent times. It's time to raise consciousness of class struggle. Sarah does a great job of achieving that goal.

Great book, terrible reader

Reader detracts from great writing. Her reading interrupts the flow, under-emphasizes certain key phrases, over-emphasizes other less significant phrases, and sounds very amateur. It seems she doesn't really understand what she's reading which causes jerky narration. It is very distracting and makes the book somewhat difficult to follow.

Fantastic book, terrible audio

My city's political book club is reading this book and it was the reason I downloaded audible. Unfortunately, the narration is awful. It's full of awkward, misplaced pauses and a robotic tone. If I didn't know it was narrated by an actual person I would have thought it was done by a defunct AI.

I bought a physical copy of this book because I couldn't listen further than a minute or two into the narration, it was jarring and hard to focus.

Great book, bad reading

The reader mispronounced half the last names and acronyms (WEB 'Du Bwa'?!? Seriously?). Very distracting.

informative and optimistic

It's hard to be optimistic as a leftist, but Sarah Jaffe offers evidence of victories through popular power. This was a good and inspiring overview of the history of struggle in America.