A RESISTANCE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, from Bookshop.org's Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Non-Fiction list all summer long

A RESISTANCE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
TAD STOERMER
Steerforth Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Non-Fiction For the week ending August 25, 2026

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An urgent, bracing new look at American history that Ava DuVernay calls "deeply necessary for this moment."

Revisit the Salem Witch Trials, the Underground Railroad, and other resistance movements of American history to get a bold new understanding of how resistance shaped our past—and how its principles can change our future.

The United States was shaped by resistance—but not in the way we’ve been taught. The Revolution did not secure liberty; it opened the door to either liberty or oppression, where only white men enjoyed all of the benefits and protections of citizenship.

In A Resistance History of the United States, public historian Tad Stoermer shows how from the very beginning, that tension—between the ideals of resistance and the realities of power—has defined America more than the Enlightenment ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Utililizing powerful storytelling to focus on key—and often lesser-known—moments in American history, this book reveals the truth of how resistance movements from Colonial times have opposed the powers that be. Stoermer covers an impressive roster of pivotal movements, with each chapter identifying a key resistance movement and principle meant to inspire contemporary readers, including:

Bacon’s Rebellion/Metacomet’s War (1676)

Salem Witch Trials (1692)

The Black Loyalists (1783)

The Underground Railroad (1850)

Through these and many more examples, Stoermer dismantles the mythologies that pass for American history—exposing the curated nostalgia, moral evasions, and institutional silences that have long protected abusive power. What emerges is an essential look at how we can take lessons from the past to understand, and effectively respond to, the injustices we face today.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: There's a reason this story has been on the Bookshop.org non-fiction bestseller list since who-kicked-the-cat. It's organized like the podcast-a-holics like it, event by event. More like a podcast script collection than a narrative history, it is nonetheless a nevessary document of how *structural* change can get made.

I myownself don't think that's the only kind that counts, where the author does.

I'm far more annoyed by the absence of footnotes/inline citations in a serious work of non-fiction. Surely in the Age of AI it would be the work of but a moment to get that done! By itself, that was one star gone. I'm not convinced the choice of political changes enshrined in law was as restrictive as the author's use of it requires. To use my own pet peeve, where's the gay-marriage part? Where's the Homestead Strike?

So not perfect but way way better, more corrective, than the triumphalist claptrap that's extruded by the yard from more mainstram publishers. Steerforth Press does interesting work all the time even when I quibble with it. This is a fine example of that reality.

I think most readers would prefer to ear-read the book, as it plays into the podcasting ethos of it.