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Wages of Rebellion Paperback – May 10, 2016
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Focusing on the stories of rebels from around the world and throughout history, Hedges investigates what it takes to be a rebel in modern times. Utilizing the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, Hedges describes the motivation that guides the actions of rebels as "sublime madness" -- the state of passion that causes the rebel to engage in an unavailing fight against overwhelmingly powerful and oppressive forces. For Hedges, resistance is carried out not for its success, but as a moral imperative that affirms life. Those who rise up against the odds will be those endowed with this "sublime madness."
From South African activists who dedicated their lives to ending apartheid, to contemporary anti-fracking protests in Alberta, Canada, to whistleblowers in pursuit of transparency, Wages of Rebellion shows the cost of a life committed to speaking the truth and demanding justice. Hedges has penned an indispensable guide to rebellion.
- Print length301 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBold Type Books
- Publication dateMay 10, 2016
- Dimensions6.14 x 0.76 x 9.21 inches
- ISBN-10156858542X
- ISBN-13978-1568585420
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About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Bold Type Books; Reprint edition (May 10, 2016)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 301 pages
- ISBN-10 : 156858542X
- ISBN-13 : 978-1568585420
- Item Weight : 13.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.14 x 0.76 x 9.21 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #698,369 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #428 in Political Freedom (Books)
- #1,307 in Political Commentary & Opinion
- #2,084 in Political Philosophy (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Chris Hedges is a cultural critic and author who was a foreign correspondent for nearly two decades for The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio. He reported from Latin American, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He was a member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for The New York Times coverage of global terrorism, and he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, is the author of the bestsellers American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He is a Senior Fellow at The Nation Institute and writes an online column for the web site Truthdig. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto.
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Customers find the book insightful and educational about today's society. They describe it as a great, important read with an engaging writing style that keeps their minds racing. Readers praise the author's clear-eyed, eloquent, and compelling writing style. While some find the emotional content sobering and depressing, others find the book accessible and inspiring.
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Customers find the book insightful and well-researched. They find it thought-provoking, educational, and passionate. The author uses history, personal experiences, interviews, and a bibliography for additional research and analysis. Readers appreciate the author's logical and persuasive writing style.
"...clear-eyed, brilliant, eloquent and possessed of deep and irrefragable moral conviction, and sustains no "mania for hope." Only truth...." Read more
"...lifetime observations of régimes in decay, the rich historic descriptions of empires in decline and a roster of revolutionaries successful and not;..." Read more
"...For fifty years I've been looking for a succinct, well researched explanation of what it takes to trigger a revolution, and the historical context..." Read more
"...Powerful, moving, thought provoking, and passionate. More than ever, this is the time to rise, resist, and revolt!..." Read more
Customers find the book enjoyable to read and engaging. They praise the writing as clear-eyed, brilliant, and eloquent. The book is considered important and a must-read for anyone interested in revolution. Readers also mention it's an entertaining, if depressing commentary.
"...I believe Chris Hedges, because he's clear-eyed, brilliant, eloquent and possessed of deep and irrefragable moral conviction, and sustains no "mania..." Read more
"Wages of Rebellion was published in 2015 and is an entertaining, if depressing commentary, on the state of the nation...." Read more
"...Still, that being said (Assange's portion is small), a great book that should be widely read by the Resistance." Read more
"...And how we can overcome those chains. Great book, read this now!" Read more
Customers find the writing style engaging and readable. They appreciate the author's firsthand knowledge and clear-eyed writing style. The book is described as excellent in content and composition.
"...I believe Chris Hedges, because he's clear-eyed, brilliant, eloquent and possessed of deep and irrefragable moral conviction, and sustains no "mania..." Read more
"...This is it. Chris Hedges' knowledge is encyclopedic, his writing style is powerful as well as readable...." Read more
"Well researched, engaging writing, eye opening troubles illuminated...." Read more
"Chris Hedges is the voice crying in the wilderness. He is an exquisite writer who always challenges my beliefs on the social order...." Read more
Customers find the book's pacing engaging. They say the author is passionate and thought-provoking. The introduction alone takes their breath away. Readers describe the book as a spur to action, with a radical sound.
"Will get your blood pumping, your chest thumping, and your mind racing. Powerful, moving, thought provoking, and passionate...." Read more
"This is on the surface a very radical sounding book but in the end it falls short of the real revolution needed to move to postcapitalism...." Read more
"...The introduction alone will take your breath away. I'm buying more copies to send to friends and family...." Read more
"...Excellent reading and spur to action!!" Read more
Customers find the book accessible and inspiring. They also mention it's convenient for them to vote.
"...And, of course, we will make it convenient for folks to vote...." Read more
"Chris Hedges writing is clear and accessible. He articulates for me what is buzzing in my head. Grateful for his clarity." Read more
"Phenomenal book. Very accessible and inspiring." Read more
Customers find the book's emotional content sobering and depressing. They find it entertaining but not emotionally engaging.
"...of Rebellion was published in 2015 and is an entertaining, if depressing commentary, on the state of the nation...." Read more
"...As far as I’m concerned it is irrefutable- and horrifying." Read more
"Very sobering . I hope the future is not as bleak as the author thinks it will be ...." Read more
"Insightful and erudite, it lacks the emotional charge required to call to arms." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2021While the world is burning -- literally, figuratively, politically, structurally and epidemiologically -- and human extinction is both ineluctable and imminent -- and we are experiencing the superimposition of a ubiquitous, mendacious (and psychotically toxic) establishment narrative through the whole ownership of the corporate media by the Schadenfreude-infused and omnicidal oligarchy gleefully responsible for this impending Apocalypse (the anthropocene extinction event) -- and, worse, nearly every other voice one hears (the few that aren't censored and suppressed) seems transparently to represent bought-and-paid-for controlled opposition, it becomes impossible to find someone to believe. The job of Diogenes seems to have been downsized, outsourced or rendered suicidal, and so one is in despair to find a truthteller, someone to beliieve.
I believe Chris Hedges, because he's clear-eyed, brilliant, eloquent and possessed of deep and irrefragable moral conviction, and sustains no "mania for hope." Only truth. Sometimes to hear deepest truth unflinchingly expressed is the only consolation one can aspire to, while waiting for oncoming extinction. So I'm grateful for all of Hedges' works -- and his lectures and videos and pronouncements of what Eliot would have called, "the doom on the house."
Chris is wryly conscious of his status. "If I sound like a seminarian," he once said, " it's because I was one." Read his work. Moral cores are hard to find, but Hedges unquestionably has one.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2018Chris Hedges is for me a reoccurring event. I first discovered him when following his pieces in the New York Times as a war corresponded in a region I knew something about, the Balkans. My impression: a man who understands what is happening; not a common occurrence in the media. He has never weaken that impression as he has moved on to other fields of inquire and other forms of publications, leaving he Times in 2003. He provoked me to try and find his roots and one of the most telling is time spent in Theology on the way to Journalism. My review of his Death of the Liberal Class calling him: The conscience of America and while (a few) others still play that role few are so relentless.
He describes one cause of the crisis of our time the incompatibility of corporate control and democratic institutions and he issued a new introduction of Princeton University reissue of Sheldon Wolin’s Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, the power house who polished that theme.
This work shows him further along dealing with the issue of what then? Things must change but how will they —Rebellion.
Here he calls on his own lifetime observations of régimes in decay, the rich historic descriptions of empires in decline and a roster of revolutionaries successful and not; thought provoking, as all of his works. In his acknowledgments he list a class mate of mine from fifty years ago who also went into the field of Journalism – successfully -- Robert Scheer who shares Hedges contrarian nature and has also a checkered career. These gentlemen and men and women like them are the beating heart of what is left of the free press in this captured state: America.
Support them when you can but you will need to go looking to find them. Less a case in Chris's case.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2017Wages of Rebellion was published in 2015 and is an entertaining, if depressing commentary, on the state of the nation. Chris Hedges is on the far left of American politics and his diagnoses and recommendations are probably unpalatable to most Americans. He believes that politicians are no longer concerned with serving the interests of ordinary citizens, their job is to serve what he calls the corporate state. He believes that large corporations like Goldman Sachs, Exxon-Mobil, and Raytheon now call the shots. He points out that since the 1970s real wages have been in decline and claims that about half the country is now living in poverty. Hedges predicts that we face a dystopian future, with Orwellian surveillance to keep us in line. He also believes “we live in a revolutionary moment” and rising inequality could eventually push us over a cliff into revolution like France in 1789 and Russia in 1917.
Hedges believes that our elites have led us to a dead end. He blames a tiny global oligarchy, which has amassed obscene wealth, for our problems. He likens global capitalism to the Beast of the book of Revelation. Hedges attended Harvard Divinity School. He is a polymath, and likes to demonstrate his knowledge by going off at tangents. His arguments often take a circuitous route and this can make for a frustrating read, but he gets there in the end.
Hedges claims that the oligarchs are greedy and rapacious, and are creating a form of neo-feudalism. They exploit workers and have created pliable, corrupt governments that have abandoned the common good to serve corporate profit. He believes that politicians today are no longer like Eisenhower and FDR who thought first of the national interest. He also believes the GOP has gone insane and views Bill Clinton as a sell-out who did more harm to the working class than Ronald Reagan. He also criticizes Bernie Sanders for supporting Hillary. Much of Wages is focused on cataloguing the injustices meted out by the state in recent years. He is sympathetic towards whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden.
Hedges believes that because the media is owned by large corporations it is biased towards corporate interests. It is full of useful idiots whose aim is to maintain the status quo and not to rock the boat. The media does not focus on the negative aspects of society. Hedges does not offer any policy-based panacea or an alternative to global capitalism. He believes that most successful revolutions are nonviolent. He argues that ordinary people should rise-up and rebel, but peacefully. He seems to favor large scale acts of civil disobedience and strikes. He advocates the peaceful approach taken by the Czech dissident Vaclav Havel who led a movement which opposed the Soviet Union's occupation of his country. He also praises Scandinavian societies that virtually eliminated poverty in the 1980s. He claims that the idea that disparity is inevitable is not correct.
Hedges was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times in Eastern Europe, Central America, and the Middle East. He watched despotic regimes collapse all over the world and gives us a history lesson on why revolutions occur. He argues that such regimes usually collapse from within. The foot soldiers of the elite (i.e., the police, courts, intellectual class, press, and finally the army) no longer have the will to defend the regime. In East Germany, the end came when the army refused to shoot demonstrators. He believes that the U.S. could be turning into East Germany with its mass surveillance. Hedges’ stated purpose is to get readers to see the choice between rebellion and doom before it’s too late.
I have always thought that Americans were far too pragmatic and sensible to elect a crazy person to be their leader. During the Great Depression there was mass unemployment in both the U.S. and Germany. Americans elected FDR and got the New Deal, while the Germans elected Adolf Hitler and got genocide and war. FDR thought his policies would save capitalism. The right, since Reagan, has seemed to believe that the New Deal was a mistake. The election of Trump and the sudden popularity of Bernie Sanders may indicate that Americans may now be looking for a different type of politician. Centrists don’t seem to have the answers people want, maybe Americans are already starting to rebel.
Top reviews from other countries
C. MartinReviewed in Australia on June 19, 20225.0 out of 5 stars A call to examine the unexamined to face the horrible truth
I have for some time suspected that capitalism is a flawed idea, and obviously, it's complex. But Hedges lays out a clear expose that allows you to follow from one torrid example of exploitation to another, until you begin to see the common threads. I highly recommend you read this book.
JOHN RIDDELLReviewed in Canada on August 23, 20155.0 out of 5 stars 'tis not to late to make a better world. " --Tommy Douglas It's the Right Thing ...
"Courage my friends, 'tis not to late to make a better world." --Tommy Douglas
It's the Right Thing To Do
Review of Chris Hedges' "Wages of Rebellion"
by John Riddell
If you are an activist, concerned about climate change and the corporate state (the merging of corporations and governments), Chris Hedges in his new book "Wages of Rebellion" says ypu are in the right place.
This Pulitzer Prize winning author says that without you, we are doomed.
We are doomed because without you there would be no rebellion, no debate, no 'other' to confront the irrational decisions and behaviours of today's corporate state.
Hedges gives us highlights from his interviews with the 'good guys' (rebels), from activist hackers to Edward Snowden & Julian Assange; to the Occupy Movement, to climate change activists and anti-oil coalitions.
Hedges doesn't leave the corporate state ('bad guys') out. He includes sections on the wages of misdirected wars, the enormous (and very profitable!) prison system in the US; and the complete co-optation of the legal system.
He maintains throughout the book that, with the merging of our legal systems into the corporate state, democracy exists in name only- worldwide, not just in the US. We see this, he says, reflected in the greed now inherent in corporate state austerity programs for what's left of the middle class; attempts to destroy or discredit unions; and the complete abandonment and disdain for those suffering in poverty-- not to mention the dismantling and redirecting of our public health care and educational systems into private hands...
What's left? How much more can we take?
Hedges says that mass movements are important now, more than ever. They are the right thing to do-- even though they will without doubt be confronted by police and/or military forces. Yet, he says that historically, the state has always collapsed before such movements when the police/military refuse to fire into protesting crowds; or when an interior coup d'etat occurs due to mass movement pressures.
Hedges is not just an arm-chair critic. He stands in solidarity with activists in all walks of life. In 2014 he took the US government to court. Hedges vs. Obama concerned section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defence Authority Act. This provision permits the military to seize US citizens and hold them indefinitely in military detention centres without due process. The US Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
"Wages of Rebellion" is essential reading- both a boot camp and a blueprint for rebellion, reflected through Hedges' lifelong experience- so well expressed in the examples and situations he offers. He argues for rebellion locally & globally, particularly the joining of groups together into common fronts.
This potentially prize-winning book is alive with situations, information, and inspiration for us all.
For me, it helps to ease the pain to know there are people like Chris Hedges in this crazy world. His is a voice of sanity, speaking out loud and clear for rebellion; for honouring our rebels for speaking out courageously against the irrational, irresponsible and dangerous behaviours of the corporate state. Without them we are doomed. We should all become rebels. It's the right thing to do.
"Wages of Rebellion" is a cut above the rest. Read it. Live it! --Pass it on.
Joe UbeshReviewed in India on February 22, 20165.0 out of 5 stars Great book with lessons for the East
A very well written and researched book on the process revolutions follow. Chris Hedges is one of America's leading intellectuals with deep practical experience as a journalist and war correspondent. While the book is mostly focused on the history of revolution throughout the world and what that portends for the west and particularly for America, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the lessons and admonitions apply equally well in the East. The main difference, as Hedges points out, is that in the west change will come as disenfranchised service and information workers and college educated classes of unemployed, and marginally employed people seek to redress the reigning ideologies of neo-liberalism, while in the East the revolution will come from disenfranchised labor through unions, strikes and organizing against the capitalist systems that oppress and exploit them.
Peter WattReviewed in the United Kingdom on September 16, 20155.0 out of 5 stars Utterly brilliant
Hedges writes beautifully. This book is terrifying because Hedges has the courage and spirit to tell us what we don't want to hear. And yet it is book which gives hope, reminding us of the importance of rebellion and of refusing to submit to injustice. Everyone who lives within the empire should read this wonderful book.
Rhiannon6Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 28, 20175.0 out of 5 stars Wages of rebellion
Wonderfully written, compelling and inspiring. Chris Hedges has a wonderful way with words, a must read for our current times....


