About the book
Thaddeus Russell's account of the American past argues that the country's freedoms owe more to its outcasts than to its respectable citizens. Drunkards, prostitutes, gangsters and unassimilated immigrants appear as accidental revolutionaries whose habits made the forbidden acceptable. Russell finds them in brothels, saloons, gambling halls and speakeasies, and even behind the Iron Curtain. His examples include drunken workers credited with creating the weekend, criminals who led the way on racial integration, and the madam Diamond Jessie Hayman, who fed and sheltered thousands of people made homeless when the 1906 earthquake struck San Francisco. He frames the nation's history as a contest between those guarding social order and those chasing their own desires.
Bryan Callen, co-host of The Fighter and the Kid and a former history major, said Russell covers things he had never heard of, unlike the conservative way he says historians tend to write.
We hope you love the books people recommend! Just so you know, The CEO Library may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page.
This book has 1 recommendation
Bryan Callen (Co-Host/The Fighter and the Kid)
What I like about Thaddeus is that his book he actually takes a look at things I never heard. I was a history major and historians tend to be pretty conservative, stagy people, right? Your average college history teacher is a pretty conservative guy, even though he might be very left wing, they’re conservative people [...]
And when they write history, they always write it from this really stagy kind. You hear about the events. You actually don’t hear about what it was like in the brothels, you don’t hear like what it smelled like in the bars, you don’t hear about the noise, you don’t hear about things that actually have an effect on people. Who were the criminals? How safe were the streets? Where are the prostitutes? Who was actually getting laid? Was there actually a lot of black and white sex that went on in the revolutionary war? Which apparently there was.
Get this book on Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books