From the author of American Rule and the host of The Muckrake Podcast, an ambitious account of how white supremacist lies, religious mythologies, and poisonous conspiracy theories built the modern world and threaten to plunge us into an authoritarian nightmare.\nTo fully understand these strange and dangerous times, Jared Yates Sexton takes a hard look at our nation’s history: namely, the abuses committed by those in power and the comforting stories that shaped the way the West has viewed itself up to the present. As reactionaries and authoritarians cling to myths about “Western civilization,” The Midnight Kingdom exposes how political power, religious indoctrination, and economic dominance have been repeatedly weaponized to oppress and exploit, sounding an alarm for what lies ahead as the current order frays.\nBeginning with the Roman Empire and racing through centuries of colonization, war, genocide, and the recurring clashes of progress and regression, Sexton finds our modern world at a crossroads. In an echo of past crises, we have arrived at a time of historic inequality and a fading trust in our institutions. Meanwhile, authoritarianism is gaining momentum and the progress of the twentieth century is being rolled back at dizzying speed. This catastrophic moment holds terrible potential for a return to a totalitarian past or, potentially, a better, realer, more human future. The difference depends on a true reckoning with our history and the larger forces at play or hiding behind this disastrous fantasy of Western superiority.\nBracing and compulsively readable, The Midnight Kingdom takes a critical look at the forces that have shaped human civilization for centuries—and invites us to seek a radically different future.

The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis

History

Sexton, Jared Yates

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Dutton

When Jared Yates Sexton finished his MFA and returned to his hometown in Indiana, he found a population plagued by the kind of turmoil and tension usually reserved for fiction. Unemployment and uncertainty lurked everywhere he looked. In his debut story collection, this pervasive turbulence tilts into the fantastical as we observe the inspired, absurd, and even horrific moments in the lives of lost and luckless Midwesterners looking for something to believe in. Through language that's both striking and unassuming, Sexton creates a dangerous and disturbing world in which everything and everyone teeters precariously on the edge of total chaos; a world that bears a startling resemblance to our own.

An End to All Things

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Atticus Books

In the follow-up to his critically lauded debut An End To All Things, Jared Yates Sexton presents twenty-three new stories that pick up where his first book left off. Whether they're set in a sweat-saturated sparring ring, the backroom of a gas station speakeasy, or in the kitchen of the house down the street, these are glimpses into an America that too-often goes unseen. Witness here the untold tales of the losers and the should've-beens, the dreamers and the hustlers, all of them just spoiling for their turn at glory or the inevitable one-two punch that puts them down for good.

The Hook and The Haymaker

Short Stories & Anthologies

Split/Lip Press

Narcissism. Sexism. Consumerism and technological fetishism. The cult of media and the rot of war. In his third collection of stories, Jared Yates Sexton turns his eye to the ravages of the American Disease with twenty-five of his wildest and most experimental pieces. Told in raving mad prose fit for these savage times, Sexton skewers every sacred cow in an attempt to diagnose the sickness of Now.

I Am the Oil of the Engine of the World

The past three years (and beyond) have provided a deluge of horrific news headlines: stolen elections, fascist rallies, families torn apart and locked away. A common refrain erupts at each new atrocity: This isn't who we are. In American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton lays bare the foundational myths at the heart of the collective American imagination. Stirring, deeply researched, and disturbingly familiar, American Rule is a call to examine common misconceptions of what it means, and has always meant, to be an American.

American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People

Americas

Product Description 
From writer and political analyst Jared Yates Sexton comes an eye-opening journey through American history that unearths and debunks the myths we've always told ourselves. 
 Recent years have brought a reckoning in America. As rampant political corruption, stark inequality, and violent bigotry have come to the fore, many have faced two vital questions: How did we get here? And how do we move forward?\nAn honest look at the past—and how it’s been covered up—is the only way to find the answers. Americans in power have abused and subjugated others since the nation’s very beginning, and myths of America’s unique goodness have both enabled that injustice and buried the truth for generations. In 
American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton blends deep research with stunning storytelling, digging into each era of growth and change that led us here—and laying bare the foundational myths at the heart of the American imagination.\nStirring, unequivocal, and impossible to put down, 
American Rule tells the truth about what this nation has always been—and challenges us to forge a new path. 
 Review 
“If you enjoy writer and political analyst Jared Yates Sexton's tweets, you'll appreciate his new book, 
American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People. It focuses on the events in history that led us to where we are today—a nation that repeatedly claims ‘this is not who we are’ when this is, actually, how we are.”— 
Marie Claire, “Best Political Books of 2020”\n“Exceptional . . . Think of 
American Rule as a modern companion to Howard Zinn's 
A People's History of the United States—books that, if our public education system was honest with itself, would be required in high school curriculum.”— 
Big Think\n“Jared Yates Sexton unmasks the horrors of the Trump era—and the fictions that have been created to whitewash them—by rooting them in the stories we have told ourselves for two centuries to hide away the white supremacy, violent conquest and subjugation, xenophobia, nativist nationalism, and plutocracy that have periodically darkened our history. A historical strip-mining that’s as brutal as the past it uncovers—and the present political moment it lays bare.” 
—Greg Sargent, author of An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Trumpian Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics\n“Coming to terms with the aftermath of Trump’s election in 2016, Jared Yates Sexton, like so many, realized he had been taught a deeply partial version of American history, one that couldn’t explain where the country had suddenly found itself. Impressively researched, vividly written, impassioned, and ambitious, 
American Rule tells the other side of the story, offering a counter-history that resists received narratives and takes a bold, urgent step toward reframing the histories of America the nation chose to tell itself.” 
—Sarah Churchwell, author of 
Behold, America: The Entangled History of “America First” and “the American Dream”\n“[ 
American Rule] surveys the leaders and policies of American rule from the Founding Fathers to now, laying bare a collective, consistent, centuries-long gaslighting of the American people. . . . Sexton’s writing is to be praised for its lack of equivocation. He calls the immoral immoral, the unethical unethical. The reading is uncomfortable yet necessary. Sexton’s well-executed project of looking at American history with radical candor is meant to make us more patriotic, not less; only with clear eyes do we have a chance of fulfilling America’s promise.” 
—Booklist (starred review)\n“Sexton, a professor of creative writing at Georgia Southern University, exposes the myth of American exceptionalism in this searing account. . . . Sexton’s survey of American political history is taut and tart. . . . An unflinching and well-crafted takedown of the nationalist rhetoric that fueled Trump’s rise.”— 
Publishers Weekly\n“Sexton continues to serve as a historical myth buster, tackling the beli

"An impressionistic and often disturbing account of the 2016 presidential race . . . This book reveals the incremental nature of public displays of hatred, growing from harsh chants and bumper stickers to, say, an open and unmasked gathering of white supremacists in Charlottesville . . . [His] dispatches are bracing." ―The Washington Post Named a Best Book of 2017 by The Coil When he agreed to cover the 2016 election season, journalist Jared Yates Sexton didn't know he was stepping into what would become―for both political parties―the most rageful and divisive political circus in U.S. history. His initial dispatches showed Democrats at war with their establishment, coming apart at the seams over the long-gestating ascendancy of Hillary Clinton and the upstart momentum of Bernie Sanders, whose grassroots campaign provoked uprisings of people desperate for change. Then, on June 14, Sexton attended a Donald Trump rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. One of the first journalists to witness these rallies and give mainstream readers an idea of the raw anger that occurred there, Sexton found himself in the center of a maelstrom. Following a series of tweets that saw his observations viewed well over 1 million times, his reporting was soon featured in The Washington Post, NPR, Bloomberg, and Mother Jones, and he would go on to write two pieces for The New York Times. Sexton gained more than 18,000 followers on Twitter in a matter of days, and received online harassments, campaigns to get him fired from his university professorship, and death threats that changed his life forever. The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore is a firsthand account of the events that shaped the 2016 presidential election and the cultural forces that divided both parties and powered Donald Trump into the White House. Featuring in-the-field reports as well as deep analysis, Sexton's book is not just the story of the most unexpected and divisive election in modern political history. It is also a sobering chronicle of our democracy's political polarization―a result of our self-constructed, technologically assisted echo chambers. Like the works of Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer―books that have paved the way for important narratives that shape how we perceive not only the politics of our time but also our way of life―The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore is an instant classic, an authoritative depiction of a country struggling to make sense of itself.

The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore: A Story of American Rage

Counterpoint

"Sexton grapples with the Trump campaign from the perspective of the crowds reveling in the candidate’s presence and message. It is a useful vantage point given the increasingly blatant bigotry in the months since the election." ―The Washington Post The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore is a firsthand account of the events that shaped the 2016 presidential election and the cultural forces that powered Donald Trump into the White House. Includes an all new afterword that details the first year of the Trump presidency. “With a novelist’s flair for the dramatic scene and evocative detail, Sexton expertly marries the quotidian tedium of the campaign trail (so many hotel room beers) and the outlandish circumstances of this particular election season with his astute observations about our polarized national condition.” ―Salon “This is the post-campaign book I was waiting for. Essential reading for understanding this country now and going forward.” ―Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night

The Man They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making

"By carefully and soberly examining his own story, Sexton deconstructs American life and gives many examples of how pervasive toxic masculinity is in our culture." ―Henry Rollins, Los Angeles Times "This book is critically important to our historical moment . . . [C]rackles with intensity and absolutely refuses to allow the reader to look away for even a moment from the blight that toxic masculinity in America has wrought." ―Nicholas Cannariato, NPR The author of The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore turns his keen eye to our current crisis of masculinity using his upbringing in rural Indiana to examine the personal and societal dangers of the patriarchy Based on his provocative and popular New York Times op-ed, The Man They Wanted Me to Be is both memoir and cultural analysis. Jared Yates Sexton alternates between an examination of his working-class upbringing and historical, psychological, and sociological sources that examine the genesis of toxic masculinity and its consequences for society. As progressivism changes American society, and globalism shifts labor away from traditional manufacturing, the roles that have been prescribed to men since the Industrial Revolution have been rendered obsolete. Donald Trump's campaign successfully leveraged male resentment and entitlement, and now, with Trump as president and the rise of the #MeToo movement, it’s clear that our current definitions of masculinity are outdated and even dangerous. Deeply personal and thoroughly researched, The Man They Wanted Me to Be examines how we teach boys what’s expected of men in America, and the long-term effects of that socialization―which include depression, shorter lives, misogyny, and suicide. Sexton turns his keen eye to the establishment of the racist patriarchal structure which has favored white men, and investigates the personal and societal dangers of such outdated definitions of manhood.

Based on the provocative and popular New York Times op-ed, this memoir alternates between the examination of a working-class upbringing and a cultural analysis of the historical, psychological, and sociological sources that make up the roots of toxic masculinity and its impact on society. As progressivism changes American society, and globalism shifts labor away from traditional manufacturing, the roles that have been prescribed to men since the Industrial Revolution have been rendered obsolete. Donald Trump's campaign successfully leveraged male resentment and entitlement, and now, with Trump as president and the rise of the #MeToo movement, it's clear that our current definitions of masculinity are outdated and even dangerous. Deeply personal and thoroughly researched, the author of The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore has turned his keen eye to our current crisis of masculinity using his upbringing in rural Indiana to examine the personal and societal dangers of the patriarchy. The Man They Wanted Me to Be examines how we teach boys what's expected of men in America, and the long-term effects of that socialization?which include depression, shorter lives, misogyny, and suicide. Sexton turns his keen eye to the establishment of the racist patriarchal structure which has favored white men, and investigates the personal and societal dangers of such outdated definitions of manhood. "By carefully and soberly examining his own story, Sexton deconstructs American life and gives many examples of how pervasive toxic masculinity is in our culture." ?Henry Rollins, Los Angeles Times "This book is critically important to our historical moment . . . Crackles with intensity and absolutely refuses to allow the reader to look away for even a moment from the blight that toxic masculinity in America has wrought." ?Nicholas Cannariato, NPR

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sexton, Jared Yates. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Sexton, Jared Yates

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sexton, Jared Yates. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis

An End to All Things

The Hook and The Haymaker

I Am the Oil of the Engine of the World

American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People

American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People

The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore: A Story of American Rage

The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore: A Story of American Rage

The Man They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making

The Man They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making