The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Revised Ed: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything [Paperback]

Joe Trippi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2008

When Joe Trippi signed on to manage Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, the long-shot candidate had 432 known supporters and $100,000 in the bank. Within a year the most obscure horse in the field was the front-runner, with $50 million in the campaign till, thanks to Trippi and his team. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is the incredible story of how Joe Trippi's revolutionary use of the Internet forever changed politics as we know it. Trippi's memoir cum manifesto offers a blueprint for engaging Americans in real dialogue—and is an instruction manual for how businesspeople, government leaders, and anyone else can make use of democracy. In a new afterword, Trippi reviews how these lessons have influenced the 2008 campaign, a race marked by higher voter interest than any other in recent history.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Joe Trippi made national headlines with his innovative Internet-based campaign for Governor Howard Dean. A senior adviser on Senator John Edwards's 2008 campaign, Trippi is an election analyst and commentator for CBS, and he has been profiled in GQ, Fast Company, The New Republic, and the New York Times Magazine. A father of three, he lives with his wife on the eastern shore of Maryland.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Revised edition (September 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006156107X
• ISBN-13: 978-0061561078
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #830,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Read -- If You Want To Understand The World Today, October 2, 2008

By 

David Phelps "David P" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Revised Ed: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything (Paperback)

The first edition of this book put the building of the 2003-2004 online revolution into an understandable context. A dozen lifetimes and generations later, we find ourselves leaving 2008 with a world turned upside down by online power. This new edition of Joe Trippi's absorbing book sets out not only what has happened, what is happening but, most importantly, what will happen, particularly when change is driven from the bottom up and not imposed from the top down.

This is a must read, vitally important book for not just activists but for everyone who wants to make a lasting, positive difference. We have the tools: Joe Trippi shows us how they can be effectively used.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "Ya gotta believe", June 17, 2009

By 

J. Troost "justtroolian" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Revised Ed: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything (Paperback)

The book reminded me of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (Trippi admits that it influenced him a lot). Trippi might not be as good a writer as Thompson was (who is?), but his book is certainly an interesting read and I want to share my thoughts on it.

1. Trippi got the 2004 Bush campaign wrong, when he thinks that it was all "transactional politics". Of course, Bush raised money from and catered to big companies like Halliburton. But apart from expensive TV ads, it was also plain grassroots campaigning that won him the general election.

2. Trippi was the first person to predict that Tom Bradley was going to lose, even though exit polls expected him to win. However, Trippi never once mentions (what was later to be known as) the "Bradley Effect" (the fact that voters won't admit in an exit poll that they did not vote for a black candidate, which causes the actual result to differ a lot from what the exit polls predict). Maybe that's because Barack Obama did not suffer from this phenomenon.

3. It's scary to see how the news media eagerly reports negative stories about a candidate (which were handed to them by other campaigns) just to have the exclusive rights to these stories.

4. Trippi is a bit naive to think that Google is not evil at all. In fact, Google gathers a lot more information from its users than it needs to run its tools. I know, I was thrilled when I saw the new Google Wave and blogged about it. However, since Wave is a server based service, Google can monitor the content of every single Wave. The data that they gather already could be used to make a lot of money on Wall-Street. Thanks to tools like Google Analytics and Gmail, Google can "sense" if there is something going on at a company. It could use that knowledge to either buy or sell that company's stock.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Much Detail About "The Overthrow of Everything", February 24, 2010

By 

Richard Telofski - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Revised Ed: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything (Paperback)

If you are looking for some insights on Internet strategy, then you should look elsewhere. The first substantial mention of that subject occurs around page 82, and then takes a bit of a vacation for the next 20 or 30 pages. I finally gave up at page 172.

The book is, however, a nice account of Trippi's general experiences as a political operative, told in a very engaging style, and if you would like to learn more about the details of his career, then this book is definitely for you. Just don't count on learning much about how the Internet led to "the Overthrow of Everything."

After throwing this book into my pile of "Books I Never Finished Reading," a better title for the book occurred to me. The title of the book should be changed to "My Story as a Political Operative Will Not Be Televised, So I Wrote This Book Instead."