Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake:
In the preface to their new book, "Crashing the Gates," Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga acknowledge that last fall they took a long look at everything they had put together for their book to date, realized they were lost, chucked it all and started over.
After reading the book I can understand what fostered this sentiment. They had taken on the extraordinary difficult task of wrestling all the flailing tentacles of the right wing machine, as well as the horrible legacy of the past four years of George Bush's imperial reign, and tried to hone it down to a simple, direct message that was focused through the lens of their formidable online experience to forge a blueprint for the future of netroots activism. That they would suddenly find themselves sitting in a pile of unwieldy information is no surprise. That they would have the courage to throw it all out, regroup and refine their narrative to a 183 page dagger that cuts to the heart of the system most certainly is.
There was a point in the whole process where Jerome and I literally debated how to best break it to the publisher that there would be no book. I don't know if it was "courage" that helped us get past that roadblock as much as it was "fear" and "terror" and "contractual obligations", lol.
It's looking like the unofficial kick off for the book will be at Austin's South by Southwest festival in mid-March, and the early drafts of the book tour have us hitting at least 30 cities. With luck, we'll have drinking liberally events at all those joints and Jerome and I can drink our way through the country. Doing the morning drivetime shows the next day might be an issue, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. I owe 5,100 purchasers of the Progressive Partner special edition a beer. I can't wait to go broke paying up!
And yes, I'll keep everyone posted as the book tour starts gelling. We're supposed to have the preliminary schedule by the end of next week.
The special edition ships around Feb 20 while the regular edition hits bookstores March 27. Orders at the online retailers like Amazon and whatever are supposed to ship before they hit bookstores, however.
For those who missed it, Alternet also reviewed the book this week.