That Old Familiar Bern

Even if you loathe Bernie Sanders, you will adore this phenomenal and utterly charming 500-plus page love letter to the state of Vermont and its people. Superbly written—Chiasson is a Wellesley College English professor and a well-known poet—it is also immersively researched, since Chiasson, who's now 55, grew up in Burlington during the 1980s when Sanders served as the small city's mayor for eight years. The only child of a struggling single mom, Chiasson interweaves his own teenage memories with Sanders's unlikely political rise, and the result is as compelling and enjoyable a book as you will encounter this year, or any other.

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