Dan Chiasson, Bernie for Burlington

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | In this symphonic work of social history, Dan Chiasson reconstructs the rise of an American icon from his Brooklyn boyhood to the old-fashioned Vermont city where Bernie came of age. With in-depth reporting and remarkable scenes from his own hometown, Chiasson tracks a faint political signal that traveled from communes, hardluck neighborhoods, traditional businesses, and county fairs to the town meetings and ballot boxes through which Sanders built his socialist platform and took on a backroom Democratic machine. 

By the shores of Lake Champlain, Bernie found his coalition among Burlington’s often feuding communities: the conservative French-Canadian Catholics whose grandparents 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 a pair of ice cream makers named Ben and Jerry.

Bernie captivated them all, running on the slogan “Burlington Is Not for Sale” to become the modern era’s first socialist mayor. This people’s epic shows us an American city transformed, one diner coffee and one neighborhood door-knock at a time. It’s a mesmerizing portrait of a politician, a place, and a movement that would change America––and a role model for the mayor now poised to transform New York.

Dan Chiasson is the author of five books of poetry, including Bicentennial (Knopf, 2014) and The Math Campers (Knopf, 2020), and, most recently, a work of nonfiction, Bernie for Burlington (Knopf, 2026). A longtime contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, Chiasson is the Chair of the English Department at Wellesley College.