Written by former Jacobin editor Shawn Gude, this is first popular biography of Eugene Debs, the railroad worker turned radical visionary whose leadership helped elect more than a thousand Socialists across the country during the Progressive Era and inspired generations of Americans to fight back against the power of the rich over our politics and our lives.

Before Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani, there was a time, a little more than 100 years ago, when some 1,200 Socialists held elected office across the United States. Wisconsin had a Socialist congressman in Washington. Ministers in Oklahoma preached the gospel of “Christian socialism” at revival-style gatherings come summertime. And Eugene V. Debs—part working-class agitator, part radical prophet—received nearly a million votes when he ran for president from behind bars.

Cofounding the Socialist Party of America, Debs would spend the rest of his life striving to convince his countrymen that being an American and a socialist was the most natural thing in the world. A rousing, poignant, intimately human tale of struggle against the odds, American Socialist is a stunning portrait of one man’s radicalization — and of the country he radicalized in turn.

Note: copies will ship in October.