If you know me, you know I’m a power reader.  Amongst the “pleasure reading” options, I’ve been spending more and more time reading work that intersects with the political and social challenges facing the United States. I’ve shared this with the Project 2029 group that I’m working with, and thought there may be wider interest. I’ll probably add to this post as things get read. If you have suggestions, I’m happy to hear them!

Also, join Project 2029! We could use the help.

Communication

  • Don’t Think of an Elephant -George Lakoff
  • The Gutenberg Galaxy -Marshall McLuhan
  • Amusing Ourselves to Death -Neil Postman

Economics

  • World on Fire -Amy Chua
  • Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything -Naomi Klein
  • Paul Krugman’s Substack: Paul Krugman | Substack
  • Feeding the Machine, The Hidden Human Labor Powering AI -James Muldoon, et al
  • Half-Earth Socialism -Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese
  • Doughnut Economics -Kate Raworth
  • The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It -Robert B. Reich
  • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism -Shoshana Zuboff

Emergency Management 

  • Extreme Cities -Ashley Dawson
  • Everything is Tuberculosis -John Green
  • What if We Get It Right? -Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
  • The Last Fire Season -Manjula Martin
  • Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis -Samantha Montano
  • Paradise Built in Hell -Rebecca Solnit

History

  • Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits, Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture -Chip Colwell
  • Open Veins of Latin America -Eduardo Galeano
  • Crazy as Hell – Hoke S. Glover III & V. Efua Prince
  • Stamped from the Beginning -Ibram X. Kendi
  • Myth America -Kevin M. Kruse (actually, just about any of his books)
  • How Democracies Die – Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt
  • The Founding Myth -Andrew L. Seidel
  • The Great River -Boyce Upholt
  • Age of Revolutions -Fareed Zakaria

Organizing

  • Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Resistance – Erica Chenoweth – free link 
  • Get on the Job and Organize -Jaz Brisack
  • Let This Radicalize You – Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba

Politics

  • Origins of Totalitarianism -Hannah Arendt

  • Democracy Awakening -Heather Cox Richardson
  • There Is No Place for Us Working and Homeless in America -Brian Goldstone
  • The Language of Climate Politics -Genevieve Guenther
  • Judge Learned Hand (referenced during Cory Booker’s Filibuster) “The Spirit of Liberty” Speech by Judge Learned Hand, 1944
  • America Last -Jacob Heilbrunn
  • Hit’em Where It Hurts -Rachel Bitecofer
  • The Death of Truth -Steven Brill
  • Ruin Their Crops on the Ground -Andrea Freeman
  • The Black Agenda -Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman
  • Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America -Crawford Gribben
  • Hiding in Plain Sight, They Knew, View from Flyover Country -Sarah Kendzior
  • Tightrope -Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn
  • Tyranny of the Minority -Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt

  • Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes – Leah Litman

  • A Most Tolerant Little Town -Rachel Louise Martin
  • Allow Me to Retort and Bad Law -Elie Mystal
  • Arbitrary Lines. How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix it -M. Nolan Gray
  • Recoding America -Jennifer Pahlka
  • The Highest Law in the Land -Jessica Pishko
  • How to Stand Up to a Dictator -Maria Ressa
  • White Rural Rage -Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman
  • Bone of the Bone: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class -Sarah Smarsh
  • Mutual Aid -Dean Spade
  • On Tyranny -Timothy Snyder (short)

Science

  • When the Ice Is Gone -Paul Bierman
  • What’s Left -Malcolm Harris
  • Serviceberry -Robin Wall Kimmerer
  • Hidden Systems -Dan Nott (graphic novel format)
  • The Weight of Nature -Clayton Page Aldern
  • Cows Save the Planet -Judith D. Schwartz
  • Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves -Nicola Twilley