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avolok's reviews
172 reviews
If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution by Vincent Bevins
5.0
“When our society truly is participatory, when we are truly forging history in every movement and acting in love and harmony with our fellow human beings, we will be able to feel this way all the time.”
Bevins continues to prove himself to be, in my eyes, a contemporary master of synthesizing documented history, relevant and revealing interviews, and personal experience to construct texts that are as thorough as they are enlightening. many nonfiction/historical works have a hard time avoiding the pitfalls of prosaic academic rigor, prioritizing information over readability (not a diss! just an observation). but what Bevins is able to do is not only overcome the hurdles of accessibility, but elevate the material to a level of urgency and engagement that makes it almost impossible to stop reading. i was initially thrown off by the seemingly disparate structure; events fragmented in both time and place described in adjacency contributed to a sense of disorientation or randomness. as the book goes on, however, relationships between these events become more and more apparent with implicit connections coming to light as familiarity and understanding deepens. a wonderfully coherent narrative takes shape, one that is more interested in learning than blaming, using this knowledge to create something better. cannot understate how much i appreciate Bevins as a voice in journalism and the world as a whole. with writers like him, you can’t lose!
Bevins continues to prove himself to be, in my eyes, a contemporary master of synthesizing documented history, relevant and revealing interviews, and personal experience to construct texts that are as thorough as they are enlightening. many nonfiction/historical works have a hard time avoiding the pitfalls of prosaic academic rigor, prioritizing information over readability (not a diss! just an observation). but what Bevins is able to do is not only overcome the hurdles of accessibility, but elevate the material to a level of urgency and engagement that makes it almost impossible to stop reading. i was initially thrown off by the seemingly disparate structure; events fragmented in both time and place described in adjacency contributed to a sense of disorientation or randomness. as the book goes on, however, relationships between these events become more and more apparent with implicit connections coming to light as familiarity and understanding deepens. a wonderfully coherent narrative takes shape, one that is more interested in learning than blaming, using this knowledge to create something better. cannot understate how much i appreciate Bevins as a voice in journalism and the world as a whole. with writers like him, you can’t lose!