How to Be a Dissident
An inspiring series of profiles of activists and rabble rousers ... Compellingly rendered, imparting clear and moving lessons or posing interesting moral challenges and ambiguities, especially when coupled with Beckerman’s insightful commentary. Yet some characters and accounts are more prickly or ambiguous than others ... Rousing ... Beckerman shows how to sound the moral alarm, which is an important first step. What comes next — the steps required to forge durable coalitions and win specific democratic reforms — is harder and on this front Beckerman is more conflicted.
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A book about moral self-inventory, written by someone honest enough to admit that his own might come up short ... The author is explicit that dissidence is not a political stance, not a career, and not a personality type. It is what happens when the distance between what you believe and how you act becomes intolerable ... Beckerman writes in a register that oscillates between the elevated and the colloquial, with enough control that the oscillations feel purposeful ... What anchors Beckerman’s book, and ultimately what stays with the reader, is its emotional honesty ... He does not flinch from his own dilemmas ... This is writing that trusts the reader to be in the same difficulty. It earns that trust.
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Despite his grim subject matter, Beckerman’s iridescent prose captivates, and he sagely aligns historical episodes to our present sense of emergency ... Beckerman’s fortunate readers will likely emerge feeling far less lonely and impotent.
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