Raise your voice 12 protests that shaped America

Review by Booklist Review

The author of To the Moon! (2018) and Disaster Strikes! (2019), Kluger introduces 12 protests and demonstrations throughout U.S. history. While his audience may know something about the Boston Tea Party, Earth Day, the March on Washington, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, they're less likely to be familiar with the Seneca Falls Convention, the union workers' strikes triggered by the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the 1968 Democratic Convention, the Stonewall uprising, the 1982 March against Nuclear Weapons, the ACT UP movement in response to the AIDS crisis, or the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Some readers may have even participated in the 2017 Women's March without understanding its origins and timing. In this well-researched book, Kluger offers a straightforward account of each protest, while also explaining historical context as well as main issues, events, and outcome. His appended "Note on Sources" provides practical tips on researching the past, including a discussion of the real but limited usefulness of Wikipedia. An informative introduction to the history of American protests and their ongoing role in our society.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In his latest work, Kluger (Disaster Strikes!) showcases 12 renowned U.S. protests, from the Boston Tea Party in 1773 to the Women's March of 2017 (the largest demonstration in U.S. history) and the Dakota Access Uprising, 2016--17. Each chapter explains in clear, often stirring language the social and political circumstances of each protest and the triumphs and setbacks involved, presenting the facts in an unbiased, forthright style. Rosa Parks, who inspired the Montgomery Bus Boycott; Larry Kramer of ACT UP; and Gaylord Nelson, who founded Earth Day, are among the featured leaders who, after experiencing injustice, oppression, or life-threatening circumstances, decided "they'd well and truly had enough." Descriptions of how early protests succeeded without the aid of the internet--and sometimes, as in the case of the Stonewall Uprising, without organization at all--show how one person can inspire many to exercise constitutional rights to "peaceably... assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances." Together with an informative introduction, a helpful note on sources makes this a strong resource for students. Final photographs not seen by PW. Age 10--up. (Mar.)

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 6 Up--Kluger's latest book covers specific activist events in United States history, beginning with the Boston Tea Party and concluding with the Standing Rock/Dakota Pipeline dispute. The work relays the details before, during, and after each protest, incorporating historical context throughout. The author conveys the setting and mood of each dissent or the events that ignited them within well-organized chronological chapters. For example, active verbs and potent imagery effectively capture the frenzy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911: "They raced as fast as their elevator cars could carry them to the burning floor, where the workers jammed inside as soon as the doors opened." Quotes, which allow readers a perspective from the time, are effectively interspersed throughout the text. The afterword discusses Kluger's use of sources like Time, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, U.S. government websites, social activist sites, and a critical evaluation of Wikipedia. VERDICT Readers will become absorbed in each protest's narrative due to Kluger's adept writing.--Hilary Writt, Sullivan University, Lexington, KY

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

In tribute to this country's long tradition of grassroots protests, a dozen significant clashes.Opening with a claim that we humans are "hardwired" to respond with disgust to anything seen as "fundamentally unfair," Kluger offers a roster of flash pointsmost of which marked change rather than directly causing it but all milestones in the annals of American social discourse and attitudes. Some, such as Stonewall, were more or less spontaneous uprisings; others, from the March on Washington in 1963 to the 2017 Women's March, were carefully (if sometimes hastily) orchestrated. Likewise, if the Seneca Falls convention and 1982's immense anti-nuke rally in New York were (relatively) peaceful, aggressive police responses made the demonstrations outside the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and the Dakota Access uprising in 2016-17 anything but. Unfortunately, Kluger never explains that in framing his account of the Dakota Access Pipeline resistance as one battle in a centurieslong struggle of the "Great Sioux Nation" against a mythic "black snake," he is not contriving a metaphor but paraphrasing Native American protesters' statements. Nevertheless, in every case he expertly brushes in historical contexts and properly notes that not every proud "liberation tale" here resulted in unqualified, or even partial, success. Photos at each chapter head not seen. Cogent reminders that armed rebellion isn't the only answer to social injustice. (source note, index) (Nonfiction. 10-16) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Introduction You caught an awfully lucky break when you were born a person. We all did. There's a lot for humanity to be proud of, after all. We're the species that mastered art, that mastered science, that understands geometry and biology and astronomy and medicine. We build rockets and send spacecraft to other planets; we design buildings that tower half a mile into the sky; we dig tunnels underground where we accelerate subatomic particles nearly to the speed of light and use them to crack open the secrets of the universe. We are, too, the species that knows how to love. Other animals surely bond deeply and powerfully to one another. They protect their babies; they guard their herds and flocks and packs. Elephants, dolphins and crows mourn their dead, bury their remains and caress their bones. Yet we are the species that feels and celebrates love in all its dimensions and all its depths. We would give our lives for the life of another--because to live without a loved one sometimes seems not to be alive at all. And yet, we can be terrible too. We are the species that mechanized war, that commits murder out of rage or greed, that betrays friends or families if it means accumulating wealth. Worst of all, perhaps, we separate ourselves into camps: we divide ourselves by race, by gender, by religion, by nation, by sexual orientation, by politics and class. And it is the more powerful group that often exploits the less powerful. Men claim rights they deny to women; white people claim privileges they have forbidden to black people and other people of color. Owners of companies cheat their workers; political groups with power exploit those without. Industrialized countries pollute the planet, indifferent to the needs of less industrialized ones. Heterosexual people drive gay people into the shadows. Nations with empires oppress their colonies. Countries with nuclear weapons terrorize the entire world. We know better; indeed, we're hardwired to know better. Scientists who study the mind have looked at which parts of the brain become active when we witness something that's fundamentally unfair--a person cheating at a game, a landlord raising a rent so high that an elderly person is tossed into the street, a drug company charging so much for a medicine that sick people can't afford it. The region of the brain that becomes active when we witness such things turns out to be the same region that goes to work when we feel disgust. It is, in some ways, an admirable part of us: we react to the thought of unfairness in the same way we do to the smell of a rotten egg or the sight of spoiled meat. And yet if we're disgusted by unfairness, we don't always act that way. Down through the millennia, strong and dominant groups have again and again worked their will against weaker and subordinate ones. But down through those same ages too, the disadvantaged and the oppressed have risen up. Emperor Caligula was overthrown in ancient Rome. The Jewish slaves in ancient Egypt cast off the pharaoh's yoke. The oppressed black people in South Africa took back their rights from the oppressing whites. The imprisoned nations of Eastern Europe wrenched themselves free of the old Soviet Union. The United States itself was born in an act of rebellion, with the thirteen colonies rearing up against the king of England. Throughout our relatively brief history, that liberation tale has been told again and again, with black people and women and poor people and more recognizing injustice--recoiling from it as a thing turned foul--and demanding the freedoms that are their right. It's an act not just of rising up, but of speaking out--and, when necessary, crying out. Americans have raised their voices many such times over the centuries, and no one group's liberation story is greater than any other's. The ongoing battles for the right to live where you choose, to love whom you love, to have the job you want and the social freedoms you deserve, to vote for the people who will make the laws and vote against them if you don't like those laws are all a part of our shared history. And the best part of that--the part that activates the regions of the brain that light up at the thought of something sweet or just or good--is that when one group becomes freer, so do we all. The twelve stories of civil uprisings that follow are by no means the only ones that have shaped America, but they are among the ones that have shaped us most--and they are ones that teach us lessons still. Excerpted from Raise Your Voice: 12 Protests That Shaped America by Jeffrey Kluger All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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