Here are 76 books that Democracy Awakening fans have personally recommended if you like
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I was born into the heart of American religious fundamentalism and spent years helping build the Religious Right before walking away from it. My book tells the story of that journey: from certainty to doubt, from dogma to paradox, from fear to love.
I’ve lived at the crossroads of faith, politics, family, and art—and these recommendations reflect the questions that still haunt me: How do we live with compassion in a divided world? How do we raise our children with tenderness in the absence of certainty? These books moved me because they don’t preach. They search. They speak in the voice of those of us who are done with black-and-white thinking, but still believe in grace.
I found Tim’s deep dive into American evangelicalism hauntingly familiar.
It’s a rare book that manages to speak with empathy and honesty about a movement I know all too well. Tim doesn’t just expose extremism; he reminds us of the messy, human hearts inside it—hearts that once belonged to me, too.
His work nudged me to remember that even in the shadows of dogma, love and beauty can still find a way to flourish.
The award-winning journalist and staff writer for The Atlantic follows up his New York Times bestseller American Carnage with this timely, rigorously reported, and deeply personal examination of the divisions that threaten to destroy the American evangelical movement.
Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarizing—and least understood—people living in America today. In his seminal new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, himself a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor, paints an…
How Contempt Destroys Democracy
by
Zachary Elwood,
After Trump's 2024 election, many liberal Americans have seen that previous ways of combatting Trump haven't worked—and that some approaches may have even created more support for Trump. If they want to be more effective in their activism, anti-Trump Americans must be willing to consider new ways of thinking about…
My own collusion with white supremacy and anti-Blackness is a lifelong journey I mitigate for my soul’s redemption. I am a Mississippi-born redneck, alcoholic, psychotherapist, San Francisco Bay Area queer, higher education administrator with a Critical Race Theory doctorate. I first learned democracy by watching my Mississippi parents risk their lives and mine in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Three-Fifths Magazine recently published “My First English: The Vernacular of the KKK.” My book, “Twelve Steps for White America” won the BookFest 1st Place Gold Medal for “Society and Social Sciences: Race Culture Class and Religion.” I work to live in a USA where race no longer predicts outcomes.
I love it when a book comes along that is both accessible and rich with content!
This book continues enriching the “how did we get here” conversation from their previous book, How Democracies Die. I argue that minority rule is an extension of the plantation economy that persists into the present.
This book took me deeply into minority rule, how it is structured, and how it threatens us today. It provided me with a more finely honed framework to not only understand the past but equip my survival in the present.
My own collusion with white supremacy and anti-Blackness is a lifelong journey I mitigate for my soul’s redemption. I am a Mississippi-born redneck, alcoholic, psychotherapist, San Francisco Bay Area queer, higher education administrator with a Critical Race Theory doctorate. I first learned democracy by watching my Mississippi parents risk their lives and mine in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Three-Fifths Magazine recently published “My First English: The Vernacular of the KKK.” My book, “Twelve Steps for White America” won the BookFest 1st Place Gold Medal for “Society and Social Sciences: Race Culture Class and Religion.” I work to live in a USA where race no longer predicts outcomes.
I could read only this book and be more educated about the history of race in America than 99% of the population.
This was a thrill ride of gripping prosecution that tied me up and couldn’t let me go until I was finished. Listening to King read the book was overwhelming since King’s considerable erudition is unapologetically attached to his lived experience of Black genocide.
Every white American (and all of White America) must read this book. Reconciliation and renewal starts with truth. If I was exhausted reading it, what must it be like for Black America to live it?
The 400-Year Holocaust: White America’s Legal, Psychopathic, and Sociopathic Black Genocide - and the Revolt Against Critical Race Theory examines and discusses factions of the legal history of anti-blackness and Whiteness through colonialism and the United States, and its impacts on present-day America. It centers anti-blackness as the core tenet of "racism" in White America and amplifies its relationship to the inherent "value" of Whiteness (i.e., White identity, White culture, White institutions, etc.). The text repositions and critically examines four core White American economic, moral, socio-cultural, and ideological institutions: human sex trafficking, rape, pedophilia, and violence (murder). Furthermore, it positions…
How Contempt Destroys Democracy
by
Zachary Elwood,
After Trump's 2024 election, many liberal Americans have seen that previous ways of combatting Trump haven't worked—and that some approaches may have even created more support for Trump. If they want to be more effective in their activism, anti-Trump Americans must be willing to consider new ways of thinking about…
My own collusion with white supremacy and anti-Blackness is a lifelong journey I mitigate for my soul’s redemption. I am a Mississippi-born redneck, alcoholic, psychotherapist, San Francisco Bay Area queer, higher education administrator with a Critical Race Theory doctorate. I first learned democracy by watching my Mississippi parents risk their lives and mine in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Three-Fifths Magazine recently published “My First English: The Vernacular of the KKK.” My book, “Twelve Steps for White America” won the BookFest 1st Place Gold Medal for “Society and Social Sciences: Race Culture Class and Religion.” I work to live in a USA where race no longer predicts outcomes.
Battalora’s teaching that whiteness was created in colonial America to divide the masses and ensure that white elites dominate is central to my Rigged Advantage Theory.
I love how rich this short book is for informing where “white” came from. Imagine if white people understood that King James (of Bible fame) was NOT white but that “white” was made up to prevent my 1st ancestor in the new world (an indentured servant) from ever aligning his potential for political power with enslaved people to VOTE in a multi-racial democracy. This drama persists!
Birth of a White Nation is a fascinating book on race in America that begins with an exploration of the moment in time when "white people," as a separate and distinct group of humanity, were invented through legislation and the enactment of laws. The book provides a thorough examination of the underlying reasons as well as the ways in which "white people" were created. It also explains how the creation of this distinction divided laborers and ultimately served the interests of the elite. The book goes on to examine how foundational law and policy in the U.S. were used to…
I am Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Munich. I also taught as a visitor at Duke University, Harvard, University of North Carolina, as well as the University of Vienna, the Vienna School of Economics, and the University of St. Gallen. Since the financial crisis of 2008, I have been writing about current economic issues and the need for new paradigms in economics. I have been advocating a humanistic approach to economics in which people and their quality of life count more than the output of the economy. I have also formulated the need for capitalism with a human face. I have also blogged for PBS.
If anyone has not yet realized the ephemeral nature of American democracy, this is the book to start.
The authors present extensive data to show that decades of dysfunctional government left many millions of low-skilled workers behind, exacerbating inequality, and supporting policies that enriched corporations while the wealthy became super-wealthy.
America faces daunting problems stagnant wages, high health care costs, neglected schools, deteriorating public services. Yet the government consistently ignores the needs of its citizens, paying attention instead to donors and organized interests. Real issues are held hostage to demagoguery, partisanship beats practicality, and trust in government withers along with the social safety net. How did we get here? Through decades of dysfunctional government. In Democracy in America? veteran political observers Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens marshal an unprecedented array of evidence to show that while other countries have responded to a rapidly changing economy by helping people who've…
Denise Kiernan is a multiple New York Times bestselling author of narrative nonfiction books including The Girls Of Atomic City, The Last Castle, and We Gather Together. Throughout her career as a journalist and an author, she has explored underrepresented stories and characters and the impact they have had on history. These stories of the unsung offer fresh perspectives on historical tales we think we already know. At the heart of many of Kiernan’s nonfiction explorations are women from a variety of different backgrounds and time periods.
There are many ways to approach history. Donna Lucey brilliantly chose to usher readers into the world of the Gilded Age via the captivating canvases of that era’s most sought-after portraitist, John Singer Sargent. There are always more stories lurking behind Sargent’s luxurious depictions of his subjects, and Lucey gets beneath the paint and the posing to give us her own picture of four very real women whose lives are far more nuanced than any portrait sitting can convey.
With unprecedented access to newly discovered sources, Donna M. Lucey illuminates the lives of four women painted by the society portraitist John Singer Sargent. With uncanny clairvoyance, Sargent's portraits hint at the mysteries, passions and tragedies that unfolded in his subjects' lives. Elsie Palmer carried on a labyrinthine love life in a Rocky Mountain castle; Elizabeth Chanler stepped into a maze of infidelity with her best friend's husband; as the veiled image of Sally Fairchild emerged on the canvas, her sister was lured into an ill-fated life in art; and shrewd Isabella Stewart Gardner collected both art and young men.…
I read many different genres, but my favorite to write and read is romance. I love ones that have angst, adventure, danger, and a passionate push and pull between the love interests. Those seem to stick with me long after I turn the last page. In my own writing, I like to do the same, giving readers a love story they want to visit again and again. The books I’ve listed are just some of the wonderful, unforgettable novels I’ve read, and I hope you enjoy them too! Happy reading!
E.L. James always delivers steamy, entertaining novels and The Mister is no exception. Maxim is a “spare” to an earldom but that changes when tragedy strikes his family. He’s left with a responsibility he doesn’t want and feelings for someone on his staff he shouldn’t have. What develops is a love story that has stayed with me. The novel reminds me of regency novels but it is set in modern times. If you’re a fan of E.L. James and haven’t read The Mister or if you’ve never read one of her novels, I recommend this one. It is a wonderfully written love story.
'Packed with passion ... a love story full of charm, music and soul-mates ... a classic E L James combo of the sweet and erotic with the perfect ending for romantics. I think it's her best by far!' - Milly Johnson, The Sun ___________________ The thrilling new romance from E L James, author of the phenomenal #1 bestselling Fifty Shades trilogy
London, 2019. Life has been easy for Maxim Trevelyan. With his good looks, aristocratic connections, and money, he's never had to work and he's rarely slept alone. But all that changes when tragedy strikes and Maxim inherits his family's…
I’m an Australian crime writer and I love reading crime with a real sense of place and/or time. Growing up in Australia, most of the time I read international authors, so finding fabulous books by local authors was a thrill every time, and that excitement has never left me. This list crosses the genre from cosy to hard-boiled crime, which hopefully means something for everyone. If nothing here grabs you, there’s a lot more fantastic Australian crime fiction to discover (did you know Australian author Charlotte Jay won the first ever Edgar Award in 1954?) and I can passion-talk about it anytime!
I like the historical setting of Gentil’s books (mainly 1930s Australia, although her characters venture overseas in a couple of the books) and the original newspaper clippings that introduce the chapters, which give you a glimpse of current affairs that form the backdrop to the story. Personally, I also enjoy the fact that her protagonist is an artist, albeit one with a wealthy family behind him. There’s danger, disapproving family, Blackshirts, unrequited love, and above all, staunch friendships; Rowland and his mates are people you wish you could hang out with. Give the Devil His Due is the seventh book in the Rowland Sinclair series.
When Rowland Sinclair is invited to take his yellow Mercedes onto the Marouba Speedway, popularly known as the Killer Track, he agrees without caution or reserve.
But then people start to die...
The body of a journalist covering the race is found in a House of Horrors, an English blueblood with Blackshirt affiliations is killed on the race track... and it seems that someone has Rowland in their sights...
With danger presenting at every turn, and the brakes long since disengaged, Rowland Sinclair hurtles towards disaster with an artist, a poet and brazen sculptress along for the…
I am a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, and I am interested in global capitalism, financial elites, and all aspects of how people broker capital deals. I am a scholar of anti-heroes who studies all of the ways that people play in the gray. My first book, Dealing in Desire, is an ethnography where I embedded myself in several different hostess bars to study the relationship between sex work and financial deal-making. I grew up in California but have lived most of my adult life in Ho Chi Minh City, Houston, Boston, and Chicago.
This is one of my favorite new books that provides an on-the-ground investigation of the global market for citizenship. I learned a tremendous amount about the “market” for passports.
Surak provides a window into the states and brokers who sell them and the billionaire/multimillionaire elites who can afford to buy them. With an incredible six years of fieldwork and hundreds of interviews, she shows the scale of a full-blown industry where buyers, brokers, and sellers all profit from the citizenship trade.
"[A] fascinating study of how people and their capital seek to move around a world that is at once hugely interconnected and driven by inequities...definitive, detailed, and unusually nuanced." Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, Foreign Affairs
The first comprehensive on-the-ground investigation of the global market for citizenship, examining the wealthy elites who buy passports, the states and brokers who sell them, and the normalization of a once shadowy practice.
Our lives are in countless ways defined by our citizenship. The country we belong to affects our rights, our travel possibilities, and ultimately our chances in life. Obtaining a new citizenship is rarely…
My name is Carl Rhodes, and I am a Professor of Management and Organization at the University of Technology Sydney. Like many others, in recent years I have become increasingly concerned, sometimes angry even, about how the organization of business and the economy is creating massive economic injustice. I am convinced that the economic system that has billionaires at its apex is deeply unfair, creating hardship, pain, and even death for too many people around the world. I am also convinced that we do not have to accept this gross injustice as being inevitable.
Guido Alani’s book traces the history of rich people in the West from the Middle Ages to now. What I especially illuminating about this book was that as far back as the 14th century people were calling for rich people to be expelled from democratic societies because they held too much power.
Alfani confronts us with the reality that the rich pretend to be ‘gods among men’ as if they do not have to play by the same rules as the rest of us. But all is not lost. Alfani insists that the rich have a fragile position in society because they are always at risk of the majority turning against them.
How the rich and the super-rich throughout Western history accumulated their wealth, behaved (or misbehaved) and helped (or didn't help) their communities in times of crisis
The rich have always fascinated, sometimes in problematic ways. Medieval thinkers feared that the super-rich would act 'as gods among men'; much more recently Thomas Piketty made wealth central to discussions of inequality. In this book, Guido Alfani offers a history of the rich and super-rich in the West, examining who they were, how they accumulated their wealth and what role they played in society. Covering the last thousand years, with frequent incursions into…
