Published in 2020
368 pages
Charlotte Alter is a national correspondent for TIME. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Crimson and has appeared on Good Morning America, Morning Joe, The Last Word, and CNN’s Reliable Sources. She co-hosts a Sirius XM radio show on Radio Andy called Alter Family Politics. Previously she worked for Jenni Konner on GIRLS.
What is this book about?
An optimistic look at the future of American leadership by a brilliant young reporter
A new generation is stepping up. There are now twenty-six millennials in Congress–a fivefold increase gained in the 2018 midterms. They are governing Midwestern cities and college towns, running for city councils, and serving in state legislatures. They are acting urgently on climate change because they are going to live it. They care deeply about student debt because they have it. They are utilizing big tech but still want to regulate it because they understand how it works. In The Ones We’ve been Waiting For, Time correspondent Charlotte Alter defines the class of young leaders who are remaking the nation–how grappling with 9/11 as teens, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, occupying Wall Street, protesting with Black Lives Matter, and shouldering their way into a financially rigged political system has informed the perspectives of the people who will govern the future.
Through the experiences of millennial leaders–from firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttiegieg to Elise Stefanik, the youngest Republican woman ever elected to Congress–Charlotte Alter gives the big-picture look at how this generation governs differently than their elders, and how they may drag us out of our current political despair. Millennials have already revolutionized technology, commerce, and media and have powered the major social movements of our time. Now government is ripe for disruption. The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For is a hopeful glimpse into the newer, younger, brighter political generation, and what America might look like when they are in charge.
