The Achilles' Heel of the American Dream Occupy demonstrations
across the United States raise the urgent question: How can
outpourings of discontent be developed into creative, community-
rooted organizations capable of long-term work to reshape
economic, political, and social life? Anyone grappling with this
task will appreciate Amy Sonnie and James Tracy’s new book,
Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power. It
makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of radical
U.S. social-movement-building during the ’60s and ’70s by
describing the organizing efforts of poor and working-class
whites—a constituency historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz describes
in the book’s introduction as “the Achilles’ heel” of the
American Dream. Hillbilly Nationalists combines archival
research with extensive oral history to critically examine five
white, working-class, radical community organizations—Jobs or
Income Now, Young Patriots Organization, and Rising Up Angry in
Chicago; White Lightning in the Bronx; and