(20111222)

The grassroots movement that started Sept. 17, 2011, with a protest in a park near Wall Street has mushroomed into a series of demonstrations in hundreds of cities around the world. In a year of protests from the Middle East to Madison, Wis., the Occupy uprising, a passionate outcry for economic justice, has been defined by its lack of definition. Now from TIME comes an illuminating collection of stories that answers many of the key questions about Occupy: How did it get started? What's behind the anger of the so-called 99% this group claims to represent? Who leads this leaderless movement? What should its agenda be? How can it transcend the occupation of tiny Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan? What Is Occupy? includes chapters from the pages of TIME by columnists like Joe Klein and Rana Foroohar, as well as new chapters original to the book, plus the results of exclusive TIME polls.

It started with a single e-mail blast, then a Twitter hash tag, but now it is the leading political and social movement in the United States: Occupy Wall Street. Occupy camps have now formed at hundreds of sites – from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine—and around the world. Now, in the acclaimed first book about the movement, Greg Mitchell charts “40 Days That Shook the World: From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy Everywhere.”


For many weeks, Mitchell, author of a dozen previous books, has written the popular OccupyUSA live-blog at The Nation magazine’s site. No one has followed the movement this closely on an hour-by-hour basis. Now, in the new book, he presents a “living” history, a day-by-day chronology of the movement starting on October 1, 2011, and now updated to late-November. Available only as an e-book, it's already been featured on MSNBC, NPR and "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann, and hailed elsewhere.


Mitchell calls it a living history because it contains more than a thousand clickable links to most of the key documents, articles, videos, and speeches that have emerged since the early weeks of the movement.


It’s a book to be read, but also used as a research tool – now, or in years ahead, by activists, journalists and historians alike. And it can be downloaded for most electronic devices: Kindles, phones, iPad, Blackberry, Macs and PCs.


Fifty cents of every purchase will go directly to Occupy Wall Street, with the aim of helping to feed and shelter campers.


Mitchell is the author of such acclaimed books as “The Campaign of the Century” (winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize), “So Wrong for So Long” and, with Robert Jay Lifton, “Hiroshima in America.” His most recent books are “Atomic Cover-Up,” “The Age of WikiLeaks” and “Bradley Manning.” He is the former editor of Editor & Publisher magazine.


After kicking off with a preface, and three key “founding documents” for the Occupy movement, “40 Days That Shook the World” introduces its detailed chronology, with countless embedded links. Along the way, it offers a feel for the national movement, from a General Assembly in Tampa .to a General Strike in Oakland. We are there for all of the major showdowns and arrests: in Boston, in Chicago, in Dallas and Tucson -- and the amazing show of resistance that led police to postpone evictions in New York and Portland before their final raids. Now it's been updated to cover events up to November 29.


The cast of characters, besides the hundreds of thousands of anonymous activists, includes this range of well-known figures: Michael Moore, Tom Morello, Naomi Klein, the Hipster Cop, Chris Hedges, Amy Goodman, Scott Olsen, the mysterious but omnipresent Mike Chec, and on and on. But it’s the everyday Occupyers who are the true stars – and “leaders.”


It's a book for today--and for posterity.