{"id":47052,"date":"2026-03-06T11:09:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T19:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=47052"},"modified":"2026-03-06T11:09:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T19:09:31","slug":"a-bernie-bro-writes-a-fawning-biography-of-his-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/03\/06\/a-bernie-bro-writes-a-fawning-biography-of-his-hero\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bernie Bro Writes a Fawning Biography of His Hero"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In \u201cBernie for Burlington,\u201d Dan Chiasson\u2019s affection for his subject risks turning history into a sales pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Bernie Sanders, pictured here in his first term, served as the mayor of Burlington, Vt., from 1981 to 1989.Credit…Donna Light\/Associated Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Alexander Nazaryan<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alexander Nazaryan writes about politics, culture and science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feb. 4, 2026 (NYTimes.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BERNIE FOR BURLINGTON: The Rise of the People\u2019s Politician and the Transformation of One American Place<\/strong>, by Dan Chiasson<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

I always read the acknowledgments page of a book I\u2019m reviewing. They\u2019re usually bland, pro forma affairs. Sometimes, though, they give an inadvertent glimpse into the authorial soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dan Chiasson concludes his new book, \u201cBernie for Burlington,\u201d a history of the eight years during the 1980s that Bernie Sanders spent running the state\u2019s biggest city, with a shout-out to his subject: \u201cAnd thank you, Bernie Sanders \u2014 for Burlington<\/em>.\u201d I think that\u2019s the heart of what bothered me about this impressive but frustrating book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernie for Burlington<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Save to\u00a0your reading list<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senator Sanders, according to Chiasson, is \u201carguably the most influential leftist politician in the modern history of the nation,\u201d \u201ca national figure of historic impact\u201d who \u201cleveled Burlington\u2019s old hierarchies, networks and institutions,\u201d turning the city into a \u201cwacky, D.I.Y. civic experiment.\u201d This \u201cseasoned manipulator of the sometimes-hostile media,\u201d who \u201covercame the fears of the establishment with one smart, nonpolitical initiative after another,\u201d transformed Burlington into \u201ca one-of-a-kind, historic inquiry into the possibilities for human happiness in an American city.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today an English professor at Wellesley College, Chiasson was born and raised in Burlington in a working-class Catholic family during the years of the four-term Sanders mayoralty. His affection for that place and time is obvious and often artfully rendered, as when he writes about the city\u2019s first Xerox machine, where \u201cmetalheads ran off posters for their bands\u201d and a local math professor printed a widely read anti-Sanders newsletter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chiasson is a witty, gifted poet and a sometime poetry critic for The New Yorker, the author of five collections. His poetic voice<\/a> is jazzy and self-effacing, quietly assured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We miss those qualities here. Sanders is legendary for the loyalty he inspires in adherents. But, unfortunately, the Independent senator benefits from Chiasson\u2019s affection more than his book does. By collapsing the distance between himself and his subject, Chiasson turns history into a sales pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He hasn\u2019t chosen an easy subject. To his supporters\u2019 delight and his critics\u2019 frustration, Sanders has been focused on the same issues for decades, without concern for shifting attitudes or polls. And he\u2019s not cuddly: As his advisers put it in a 1982 memorandum, \u201cYou are not nice to people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanders was one of many \u201cidealistic pilgrims\u201d from larger cities who saw Vermont as an affordable place to put countercultural politics into practice. He first went there in 1968, spent his first years as an \u201citinerant carpenter and freelance writer, deeply influenced by the rogue psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich.\u201d (Sanders even penned\u00a0some creepy erotica<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBernie for Burlington\u201d is at its best when it ignores both Bernie and Burlington. Writing about Vermont as a whole, Chiasson is encumbered neither by ideological affinities nor by hometown pride. He describes a state whose character is composed of \u201cprogressivism, thrift and orneriness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vermonters were traditionally resistant to government initiatives, and hostility was not limited to Washington. Chiasson chillingly describes \u201cRural Vermont,\u201d a eugenics study from 1931 that \u201cspeaks of the deteriorating of Yankee blood and the problem of towns being overtaken by immigrants who were \u2018failures elsewhere.\u2019\u201d A story of quaint inns, ski resorts and quirky antique shops, this is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Between 1945 and the mid-1960s, the number of farms in Vermont fell sharply. The college-educated newcomers, inspired by back-to-the-land guides<\/a>, provided a necessary blood transfusion, even if their experiments were often quixotic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanders ran for public office\u00a0<\/strong>as a candidate of the radical Liberty Union Party, four times between 1972 and 1976, losing two U.S. Senate races and two bids for the governor\u2019s mansion. He had become, Chiasson acknowledges, a \u201cperennial candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Chiasson\u2019s telling, an adviser named Richard Sugarman persuaded Sanders to leave behind the \u201cperformative politics\u201d of the 1960s. By 1977, Chiasson writes, \u201cthe hippies were now in their 30s, with families to raise and mortgages to pay.\u201d Sanders announced he was leaving Liberty Union later that year, charging that the party had not been aggressive enough in fighting \u201cbanks and corporations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a testament to Chiasson\u2019s research that I often found myself highlighting people and places I wanted to explore further. But the accumulation of detail also makes for an infuriating reading experience. A book that is about the time Sanders spent as mayor of Burlington takes 257 pages to get to his first mayoral run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sanders candidacy was powered by \u201ca new wave of Vermont transplants\u201d who were liberal but not especially interested in forming communes. \u201cTheir music was Madonna, Patti Smith and Talking Heads,\u201d Chiasson writes, their clothes bright and chic. And for these new arrivals, \u201cpart of the Burlington experience was voting for Sanders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the four terms that followed, Sanders would turn a \u201cdowdy, backward, deeply Catholic\u201d city into \u201cthe place to see socialism in action,\u201d Chiasson argues. Yet he appears to undermine his own argument by conceding that, in some respects, Sanders turned into \u201ca classic ribbon-cutting mayor.\u201d He also calls the proud democratic socialist an \u201cinnovative capitalist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An honest assessment of Sanders\u2019s mayoralty would grant that he expanded parkland along the shores of Lake Champlain, made important strides in creating affordable housing and practiced a grass-roots politics that took the concerns of young people seriously. At the same time, he engaged in the kind of gestures Sugarman had advised against, such as his controversial 1985 trip to visit the Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1988, Sanders went to the U.S.S.R. While there, he attempted to make Yaroslavl, an ancient settlement north of Moscow, Burlington\u2019s sister city. Chiasson sarcastically excoriates a New York Times Moscow correspondent, Anton Troianovski, for reporting deeply,<\/a> during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, on Sanders\u2019s efforts while mayor to foster closer ties with the Soviet Union. It\u2019s an unseemly attack that accuses Troianovski of trying to \u201cred-bait\u201d Sanders, while failing to acknowledge the very real risks to high-profile American journalists in Putin\u2019s Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanders and his wife, Jane, did not participate in this book, though it is not clear how much they would have had to add. Chiasson writes about traveling to Vermont in 2024 to meet Sanders at a picnic, where Chiasson told Sanders about growing up in his Burlington. The response from Sanders: \u201cOh, boy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must have been an anticlimactic encounter, though maybe also an apt one. The stubborn Sanders has cleared the way for younger, more charismatic democratic socialists, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani. But Chiasson does little to dispel the charge, frequently voiced by Sanders critics, that he has few robust legislative accomplishments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have no doubt that Chiasson has written the authoritative history of the Sanders tenure in Burlington. Whether this somewhat confounding labor of love was necessary, whether it tells us something important or new, is more difficult for me to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BERNIE FOR BURLINGTON<\/strong>: The Rise of the People\u2019s Politician: and the Transformation of One American Place<\/strong> | By Dan Chiasson | Knopf | 569 pp. | $35<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A version of this article appears in print on\u00a0March 1, 2026, Page\u00a016\u00a0of the Sunday Book Review\u00a0with the headline:\u00a0Idol Worship.\u00a0Order Reprints<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Today\u2019s Paper<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Contributed by Michael Kelly, H.W.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In \u201cBernie for Burlington,\u201d Dan Chiasson\u2019s affection for his subject risks turning history into a sales pitch. By Alexander Nazaryan Alexander Nazaryan writes about politics, culture and science. Feb. 4, 2026 (NYTimes.com) When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. BERNIE FOR BURLINGTON: The… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47052"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47053,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47052\/revisions\/47053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}