Reddit reviews The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Galaxy Books)

All history you learn in high school is that kind of bullshit. Unfortunately, a lot of history books will give you the propaganda dissipated at the time as fact, much as I imagine nationalistic history books written in 200 years will quote from CNN and Fox to describe Bush's great war against the terrorists who hate our freedom. People don't like questioning nationalistic mythologies. Especially when they explain that we're all great heroes of idealistic freedom.

Given that you're on /r/Anarchism, you'd probably enjoy A People's History of the United States. Or really anything by Howard Zinn. The Populist Movement by Lawrence Goodwyn is good for talking about the post-Civil War era economic bullshit. Any biographies or autobiographies of the founders (even those written from a nationalistic point of view) will be unable to hide their business dealings and positions of power before, during, and after the revolution.

Any decent US history class you take should have a good list of readings. Better than I can remember off the top of my head.

If you have a Kindle The Autobiography of Ben Franklin is free and goes into great detail about his wealth, his positions in the Pennsylvania colonial government before the revolution, and his terms as President of Pennsylvania after the revolution (before the Constitution was adopted abolishing such positions). It does, of course, completely gloss over the fact that he knocked up a prostitute at 19, or that he was constantly having affairs. But often history is about recognizing what people aren't saying.

It's kind of sad that impoverished farmers in the 1800's could educate themselves about monetary policy but citizens today can't be bothered to learn the basics of how the banking system works.

EDIT: Someone asked how I could know this. The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America is how I know. The Farmers' Alliance was a cooperative organization but also worked to educate its members on issues affecting them. They had speakers who traveled the country lecturing on the topic of monetary policy.

That's how I know.

Good question. I think it will take huge amounts of grassroots education and effort. I think success and support at local levels is mandatory to show others what is possible. When I asked Richard Grossman a similar question he told me to read The Populist Moment. But certainly this all depends on what type of party you are interested in creating :-)

http://www.amazon.com/Populist-Moment-History-Agrarian-America/dp/0195024176/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1324785957&sr=8-4