Bulwark Publisher Sarah Longwell Announces Her First Book: “How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time”

The definitive playbook for consigning MAGA-style politics to the ash heap of history, where it belongs. Featuring a foreword by Bulwark editor Jonathan V. Last.

WASHINGTON – Friday, March 6, 2026 – Today Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell announced her first-ever book, “How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time,” to be published on September 8, 2026 by St. Martin’s Press, acquired by Executive Editor Tim Bartlett from Mollie Glick at CAA. Sarah has conducted weekly focus groups with voters since 2018, and the book will draw on this unique experience to lay out a roadmap for how Democrats can beat the MAGA movement and reverse the country’s alarming slide into authoritarianism.

Copies of the book can be pre-ordered here. You are also free to use these images of the book cover, with credit to St. Martin’s Press.

After Donald Trump won the 2024 election, Sarah did what she’s done every week for the past eight years: She sat down with voters. Altogether she’s conducted hundreds of focus groups with thousands of ordinary Americans, making up the largest and longest-running qualitative data set in the industry, with input from Republicans, Democrats, and the politically homeless. What she heard is at the heart of this book.

In “How to Eat an Elephant,” she lays out the playbook for building a pro-democracy coalition big enough, bold enough, and tough enough to defeat authoritarian populism for good. Not by doing another poll or debating whether to be more progressive or more moderate, but by actually fighting: dominating the media narrative, building new communications infrastructure like the right has done for decades, and talking to voters like adults.

Drawing on her own unlikely political journey from a lesbian Republican operative to the vanguard of the anti-MAGA movement, Sarah delivers a book that is equal parts war manual and pep talk. With her trademark bluntness and humor, she explains exactly how we got here and, more importantly, what we build next—all while directly quoting the most important but overlooked people in the country: the voters themselves.

Answering the question: How do you eat an elephant? One voter at a time.

For media requests, please contact Tony Franquiz at franquiz@thebulwark.com.

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About the Author

Sarah is CEO and publisher of The Bulwark, one of the fastest-growing independent media companies in the country, with millions of subscribers across all platforms. She is also the host of The Focus Group podcast, in which listeners hear directly from voters. She has decades of experience leading some of the nation’s highest-visibility targeted persuasion campaigns, and is a nationally recognized leader in qualitative research. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her family and is a graduate of Kenyon College.