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This Fight Is Our Fight

The Battle to Save America's Middle Class

ebook
1 of 2 copies available
1 of 2 copies available

#1 New York Times bestseller

The fiery U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and bestselling author offers a passionate, inspiring book about why our middle class is under siege and how we can win the fight to save it
Senator Elizabeth Warren has long been an outspoken champion of America's middle class, and by the time the people of Massachusetts elected her in 2012, she had become one of the country's leading progressive voices. Now, at a perilous moment for our nation, she has written a book that is at once an illuminating account of how we built the strongest middle class in history, a scathing indictment of those who have spent the past thirty-five years undermining working families, and a rousing call to action.
Warren grew up in Oklahoma, and she's never forgotten how difficult it was for her mother and father to hold on at the ragged edge of the middle class. An educational system that offered opportunities for all made it possible for her to achieve her dream of going to college, becoming a teacher, and, later, attending law school. But now, for many, these kinds of opportunities are gone, and a government that once looked out for working families is instead captive to the rich and powerful. Seventy-five years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal ushered in an age of widespread prosperity; in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan reversed course and sold the country on the disastrous fiction called trickle-down economics. Now, with the election of Donald Trump—a con artist who promised to drain the swamp of special interests and then surrounded himself with billionaires and lobbyists—the middle class is being pushed ever closer to collapse.
Written in the candid, high-spirited voice that is Warren's trademark, This Fight Is Our Fight tells eye-opening stories about her battles in the Senate and vividly describes the experiences of hard-working Americans who have too often been given the short end of the stick. Elizabeth Warren has had enough of phony promises and a government that no longer serves its people—she won't sit down, she won't be silenced, and she will fight back.

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    • Kirkus

      Starred review from May 15, 2017
      Girded for battle, the senior senator from Massachusetts forcefully lays out the bleak picture of an American government increasingly controlled by corporate greed and special interests.Warren (A Fighting Chance, 2014, etc.), a former Harvard Law School professor and a prolific author, has been America's Cassandra even before becoming a Democratic senator in 2012. She is appalled by the inability of regular working people like her own family from Oklahoma to make a living in a once-thriving American economy. She proudly cites how, in the 1960s, her mother got a minimum-wage job after her husband's heart attack and was able to keep the family going and even pay the mortgage. Yet now, a war of attrition is being waged on most Americans, a kind of "economic boa constrictor that is squeezing working families so hard they can't breathe." The causes are broad and include stagnant wages that have not kept up with inflation, unstable employment as companies move overseas, lack of benefits such as basic health and day care, high fixed expenses (transportation, housing, college), and rising debt. Using several examples of personal stories, such as a low-wage worker and an African-American family struggling from layoffs and mortgage discrimination, Warren addresses these issues one by one. In Washington, D.C., she has taken up the cudgel for basic fairness regarding the minimum wage and alleviating the national scandal of student-loan debt, all the while struggling mightily against the Republican majority. Indeed, Warren's education in maneuvering through the powers that be is eye-opening, and she shares her experiences with grim frankness. As she notes, the persistent mirage of trickle-down economics, begun by Ronald Reagan, has taken on fresh life thanks to Donald Trump, resulting in renewed calls for deregulation (especially on banks), withdrawing research and infrastructure spending, cutting taxes for the rich, busting unions, and permitting unlimited lobbying and influence. The author sounds the alarm that an oligarchy is in the making, and her urgency is palpable and necessary. Inspiring words to empower Warren's marching army.

      COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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  • English

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