The AOC Generation: How Millennials Are Seizing Power and Rewriting the Rules of American Politics

Journalist Freedlander debuts with a granular account of New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s political rise and the social and economic conditions that fueled it. Placing Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 victory over incumbent Joseph Crowley within a broader context, Freedlander examines how the 2008 financial crisis, Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, and outrage over Donald Trump’s election helped to bring left-wing ideas into the political mainstream, and cites evidence that millennials are the best educated, most diverse, and most liberal generation in American history. Milestones from Ocasio-Cortez’s college years, including her father’s death when she was 19 and her junior year in Niger, where she worked on maternal health-care issues, shed light on her personal motivations and political acumen, but the book’s strength lies in the attention Freedlander pays to lesser-known figures and movements. He explains how the efforts of grassroots activists in the Bronx and Queens to unseat a group of Democratic state legislators who caucused with the Republican Party helped Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign, and profiles the leaders of Jacobin magazine, whose reading groups and “open hearted” yet “sharp” editorial sensibility reinvigorated the Democratic Socialists of America. Progressive political junkies will relish this deep dive into the forces behind Ocasio-Cortez’s turn in the spotlight. (Mar.)