BERNIE FOR BURLINGTON

Before Vermonters sent him to the Senate.

Neatly blending biography and memoir, Chiasson, an accomplished poet and critic, recalls growing up in a New England city that elected a socialist mayor. Thus began the rise of Bernie Sanders, “the perennial outsider” soon to become “a decisive player in American politics.” The Sanders seen here is at once a singular figure and the emblem of an era. He and his first wife bought 85 acres for $2,500 in 1964, just before Vermont became a hippie magnet. The Brooklyn-raised carpenter and freelance writer shared the newcomers’ antiwar views, but as “a fan of diner food, basketball, and country music, he was a snag in the countercultural fabric.” Sanders lost several elections in the 1970s. Known for “harangues” about tax policy and corporate power, he was viewed “as somewhat cracked,” writes Chiasson, whose boyhood memories add lived-in detail. When Sanders made the rounds in Chiasson’s neighborhood around 1980, his grandfather said, “Don’t open the door—it’s Sanders!” In 1981, Sanders won the first of four two-year terms as Burlington’s mayor. In Chiasson’s colorful chapters about city hall under Sanders, we see him rage at future Vermont Governor Howard Dean (at issue: a bike path) and win unlikely support from police and gun owners. Few political books are this well written. Sanders, speaking to Burlington’s “poor and elderly,” realized that “Vermont was not any old wilderness: a dense cultural understory, with established political customs and mature social hierarchies, hid in the larkspur.” It’s not clear that Chiasson needed 500-plus pages to tell this story, but his elegant sentences, evocative scene setting (remember 1980s “fern bars”?), and insightful conclusions about Sanders’ “consistency” and durable message far outweigh this charming book’s minor flaws.

An observant, eloquent dual portrait of an uncommon public servant and his adopted home city.