Rules for Radicals, Saul D. Alinsky
Rules for Radicals, Saul D. Alinsky
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Rules for Radicals
A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals

Author: Saul D. Alinsky

Narrator: Scott Lange

Unabridged: 7 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/11/2015

Synopsis

First published in 1971, Rules for Radicals is Saul Alinsky's impassioned counsel to young radicals on how to effect constructive social change and know “the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one.” Written in the midst of radical political developments whose direction Alinsky was one of the first to question, this volume exhibits his style at its best. Like Thomas Paine before him, Alinsky was able to combine, both in his person and his writing, the intensity of political engagement with an absolute insistence on rational political discourse and adherence to the American democratic tradition.

About Saul D. Alinsky

Saul Alinsky was born in Chicago in 1909 and educated first in the streets of that city and then in its university. Graduate work at the University of Chicago in criminology introduced him to the Capone gang, and later to Joliet State Prison, where he studied prison life. He founded what is known today as the Alinsky ideology and Alinsky concepts of mass organization for power. His work in organizing the poor to fight for their rights as citizens has been internationally recognized. In the late 1930s he organized the Back of the Yards area in Chicago (the neighborhood made famous in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle). Subsequently, through the Industrial Areas Foundation which he began in 1940, Mr. Alinsky and his staff helped to organize communities not only in Chicago but throughout the country. He later turned his attentions to the middle class, creating a training institute for organizers. He died in 1972.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jennifer on November 19, 2016

I read Alinsky for the first time in graduate school, and pulled his books off the shelf again upon hearing that Barack Obama studied and was influenced by Alinsky in his days as a community organizer. The book is as good as I remembered, and freshened upon re-reading by the ability to apply some of......more

Goodreads review by Stephen on January 05, 2009

The first time I read this book was when I was sixteen. Since then, I have given away and replaced the book several times. Alinsky, who was active in both Chicago (where I lived for over ten years) and Rochester, NY (where I grew up and live now), was a terrific community organizer. The language is......more

Goodreads review by Meg on August 09, 2007

There are definite aspects of Alinsky's book that are getting a little outdated. It's interesting to read the final chapters, and see his hope for what essentially has become the responsible investment movement - a large part of which is students on campuses getting their schools to divest from comp......more

Goodreads review by Laura on January 27, 2009

Ah, for the simpler days of radicalism, when you could get your college friends together for an impromptu rally, and no one had an excuse why they couldn't come. That's not really what this book is about, but, having been written in 1971, it did inspire in me a bit of nostalgia for the kind of activi......more

Goodreads review by Larry on January 22, 2022

Newt Gingrich is criticizing Barack Obama by associating him with Saul Alinsky. Read this book if you want to know what Mr. Alinski thought and how he organized people without power to make their lives better. I am not sure if Saul said, "Power to the people!" but I am sure that is what he meant. Th......more

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