I am now a grandfather, and I am fearful of the world being handed down to my grandchildren. As a reporter and then professor, I studied how media have helped create a world based on division – us and them, party versus party, nation versus nation. I look across history from tribal warfare to warring kingdoms to world wars and fear it has always been so and always will be. I wrote my book with little confidence that humans will change, but I wanted to offer understanding of why this is so. And I hope this list will add to your own understanding of scapegoating.
I like this book because I do believe that people are good and reasonable.
I get along and find much in common with almost any person I meet. BUT when that person becomes part of a group, I am not so sure. Keith Payne helps explain why. Like me, he finds that groups change people. Groups ask people to come together around an idea of who they are – and who they are not.
I recently read a news story of two men in Ohio who met in a dog park, started talking politics, and eventually ended up shooting one another. Why didn’t they just talk about dogs? Good, Reasonable People helped me better understand.
Good Reasonable People
By
Keith Payne,
What is this book about?
A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2024
“An eye-opening analysis of why our politics have become so polarized….Keith Payne illuminates one of the biggest problems of our time and lights the way toward some promising solutions.” —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again
"Good Reasonable People challenges each of us to drop the weapon of demonization and replace it with something more powerful: a framework for understanding—and for being understood by—people who see the world differently from us." —Margot Lee Shetterly, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Figures
I could not write about scapegoating without writing about perhaps history’s ultimate example of scapegoating: the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
I focused on this volume because I wanted to understand how Hitler turned the German population against a small minority in their country. I appreciated how Friedländer takes his time and carefully traces the ideological and cultural steps that go into creating a scapegoat.
Volume II covers the horrendous result: the Years of Extermination, 1939-1945.
A magisterial history of the Jews in Nazi Germany and the regime's policies towards them in the years prior to World War II and the Holocaust. Written by arguably the world's leading scholar on the subject.
Himself a survivor, Friedlander has been a leading figure in Holocaust studies for decades and this book represents a definitive summing up of his research and that of hundreds of other historians.
NAZI GERMANY AND THE JEWS: THE YEARS OF PERSECUTION is perhaps the richest examination of the subject yet written, and, crucially, one that never loses sight of the experiences of individuals in…
The Improbable Wonders of Moojie Littleman
by
Robin Gregory,
After his doting aunt dies, a special fourteen-year-old boy who has trouble fitting into a remote 1906 village goes against a powerful retired Army captain determined to eradicate his outcast kin.
Like many people, I have been regularly struck by the electoral map of the United States that shows the nation clearly divided into well-defined blocks (blocs) of blue and red. How did we get this way?
I like how the book clearly makes sense of the cultural clashes that have led to the division: guns, abortion, sexuality, climate, race, and more. Unfortunately, as I did with my own book, I came away pessimistic about whether the nation can change.
"A world-class intellectual. . . . [Colin Woodard’s] research can help Americans rediscover their common identity in spite of all the attempts to divide them." —Garry Kasparov
"A powerful paradigm for understanding the defining hot button issues of contemporary America and the action we can take to bridge our cultural divisions and save the republic." —The Next Big Idea Club
“A lucid exercise in political geography with tremendous—and disturbing—explanatory power.” —Kirkus Reviews
The bestselling author of American Nations reveals how centuries-old regional differences have brought American democracy to the brink of collapse and presents a powerful story that can bridge…
I can get wrapped up in the division and turmoil affecting my country, the United States. It is enlightening, if disheartening, to remember that Western democracies around the world are going through similar spasms.
Each nation has its own version of Make America Great Again and, as in the United States, the debate can often center around immigrants and their place in the nation. I like the expansive and global reporting that Polakow-Suransky brings to the topic.
His time at The New York Times, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and elsewhere was evident to me. I felt I was reading a first-hand report on the scene in multiple nations.
Go Back to Where You Came From
By
Sasha Polakow-Suransky,
What is this book about?
What if politicians pose a graver threat to liberal democracy than mass migration?
Brexit and Donald Trump's victory were just the beginning -- and Marine Le Pen's defeat does not signal a turning of the tide. From the Introduction
From Europe to the United States, opportunistic politicians have exploited the economic crisis, terrorist attacks, and an unprecedented influx of refugees to bring hateful and reactionary views from the margins of political discourse into the mainstream. They have won the votes of workers, women, gays, and Jews; turned openly xenophobic ideas into state policy; and pulled besieged centrist parties to the…
Did a heartbreak ever make you want to move to the other side of the planet?
Failed comedian and heartbroken idiot escapes to a jungle hut on an obscure island in Thailand. Warm sunshine, new friends, and fresh mangoes heal most wounds.
“Funny, wise and thought-provoking, outspoken, touching, surprising, and…
I first should say that the original title is indeed Adventures of, rather than, The Adventures of. I sometimes go overboard on details. That attention to detail is why I want to include a novel on my list about scapegoating.
Hundreds of books have been written about the United States, slavery and its aftermath. But I have found few books, if any, that offer such a profound, critical exploration of these times and issues.
I go back to this book often to feel the everyday awfulness of slavery and how societies can be constructed to make one group subservient to another, a wrong that a young river boy is able to perceive.
I wrote Persecuted because I believe that scapegoating has and will tear apart nations around the world. And I now have grandchildren. Sometimes called “collective persecution,” scapegoating is why people come together and how people come together.
The idea: Human identities are formed in relation to—and then persecution of—some Other. Throughout the history of humankind, groups have defined themselves not only by who belongs but who does not belong. Inclusion is gained by exclusion. In our time, nations rely on scapegoating to draw boundaries between “us” and “them” and ultimately fracture along polarized lines of grievance and blame. I hope that by understanding scapegoating, we might lessen its power. But I fear not.
From farm to urban, from World War II to the Digital Age, UFOs and God spotlights the underbelly of the human condition in all its glory and despair on life’s varied stages.
Hope, Laughter, Survival on the Refugee Trail
by
Eileen Kay,
Dramatic true story with a wacky sense of humor.
Retired English teacher in Budapest meets foreign medical students fleeing the war in Ukraine, producing a sweet and unlikely friendship, spicy soup, and wicked joking. A sense of humor, however dark, can keep us from despair.
