Bernie for Burlington

One of Kirkus Reviews’s “Most Anticipated Nonfiction of Spring 2026”
One of Lit Hub’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2026”

“The more I read of Dan Chiasson’s book, the more moved I was by how absolutely unwavering Bernie’s message has been across the many decades of his career.” —Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home, on creating the cover art for Bernie for Burlington

“Chiasson has written an admiring, even loving, account of the life of a man he observed from ‘a front-row seat.’ It’s not a hagiography—the author is too astute for that, and he gives us too much of himself in the story for it to be a flat-out praise-song to another man. . . . [He] writes exhaustively and often beautifully—he is a poet, after all.” —Tunku Varadarajan, The Wall Street Journal

“Revelatory. . . . Bernie for Burlington is nearly as much a memoir of its author as it is a biography of its subject and, not least, a history of the Green Mountain State.” —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker

“Marvelously rich. . . . Unfettered by the restraints of traditional biography, Bernie for Burlington morphs into a sprawling narrative epic, with three equally prominent protagonists: Bernie himself, of course, the unlikely three-term socialist mayor of Vermont’s most populous city; Dan Chiasson, an impressionable kid with literary aspirations from a modest French-Canadian family; and then the city of Burlington, grim and somewhat dull and then again transcendently beautiful. . . . Chiasson’s Bernie for Burlington breathes new life into a genre often straitjacketed by the ‘and then’ approach to telling someone’s life. An unconventional politician deserves an unconventional biography.” —Christoph Irmscher, Washington Monthly

“The transformation of ‘one small city, one small state’ ignites a political revolution in this memoir and cultural history of a mass movement. With Bernie Sanders as the lens, Chiasson, a poet and literary critic, offers a genesis story about shifting identities in Burlington and Vermont, inexorably linked with Sanders’s rise as a national political force. Written with the intimacy of a love letter to the author’s hometown, its 500-plus pages . . . paint an unrivaled portrait of Vermont over the last 50 years.” —Gabriella Gage, Harvard Magazine

“A definitive, eloquent account of a political movement and the lyrical, anecdotal memoir of a son of the People’s Republic of Burlington who grew up in the midst of it all. . . . Dan Chiasson has written a huge, fascinating, masterful book. Bernie For Burlington is a complete pleasure to read. . . A winner by a landslide.” —Marvin Minkler, The North Star Monthly

“While [Bernie for Burlington] uncovers no scandals, it’s full of telling anecdotes and presents an in-depth study of Sanders’ personality as well as his politics. . . . [it] will be seen years hence as the definitive origin story of a unique political career.” —Kevin J. Kelley, Seven Days Vermont

“Story-telling has various eternal wellsprings: history and gossip, the local and the epic, jokes and legends. Bernie for Burlington orchestrates energy from all of the above in a wild variety of stories, voices and characters. At the center, Bernie Sanders of Brooklyn and Burlington is an important and unlikely hero, and Dan Chiasson of Burlington and American poetry is a masterful and unlikely narrator.” —Robert Pinsky

“This is a book we need right now—a big, lovingly-woven, Whitmanesque wickerwork of grievances and glories, home truths and triumphs, about a Brooklyn kid and the city on the shore of Lake Champlain where he shaped his compassionate cause. Read it and you’ll never think about local politics the same way again.” —Nicholson Baker

“A fascinating portrait of hard-knocks Burlington, Vermont, and of its ingenious, enterprising, indefatigable socialist mayor, Bernie Sanders, who went from seat-of-the-pants “perennial candidate” to national fame.” —Ian Frazier

“Two down-and-out characters—an unruly perennial fringe candidate and a decaying New England mill town—joined forces at an unpropitious political moment to create a left populism and new urbanism whose revitalizing influence is still growing nationwide. Dan Chiasson relates this Vermont fable with a historian’s rigor, a poet’s eye, and a memoirist’s sharp evocations of time and place. I couldn’t put it down.” —Timothy Noah, staff writer at The New Republic and author of The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It


“Deeply reported and wildly readable. . . . Chiasson is an apt chronicler of the remarkable change in his hometown, linking historical research, journalistic inquiry and personal anecdote to produce something beyond a traditional political biography. . . . [He] writes beautifully, employing rhythmic phrasings and droll observations like the poet he is. . . offer[ing] a personal lens on a key chapter in the story of American politics.” —Sara Beth West, BookPage (starred review)

“In a detailed, rich profile of this iconic public figure, Chiasson takes readers from Sanders’s Brooklyn childhood through his adolescent dreams of escape to the verdant wilderness of Vermont, years of activism and increasing local influence, and the successful 1990 congressional campaign that catapulted Sanders onto the national stage. . . . Chiasson is a great storyteller, effortlessly creating context and conveying nuance. . . . This amusing, provocative, painstaking, and wide-ranging political biography is sure to appeal to a wide audience.” —Kathleen McBroom, Booklist (starred review)

“Few political books are this well written. . . . Elegant sentences, evocative scene setting, and insightful conclusions about Sanders’s ‘consistency’ and durable message. . . . An observant, eloquent dual portrait of an uncommon public servant and his adopted home city.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Ambitious. . . . illuminating. . . . [Bernie for Burlington] covers a massive amount of territory, including hot-button issues of Sanders’s mayorship. . . and the author’s own experiences growing up in Burlington. . . . Most intriguing is Chiasson’s delineation of Sanders’s outsider role within Vermont’s counterculture . . . [which] developed a class-driven ideology unique even among his lefty milieu. This new vision became the nascent seed for today’s socialist movement in the U.S., giving Chiasson’s dense account some historical heft.” —Publishers Weekly