Here are 100 books that Micro Activism fans have personally recommended if you like Micro Activism. Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century

Kat Calvin Author Of American Identity in Crisis: Notes from an Accidental Activist

From my list on how to change the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an activist and always have been. My organizations, Spread The Vote + Project ID and Project ID Action Fund work on the ground and on impactful policy nationwide. I would never have been able to build a movement or an organization that makes a real impact without the lessons that I have learned from the past. Every book I have read about how change was made before me has helped me do the work I do and my hope is that future leaders will learn these lessons too.

Kat's book list on how to change the world

Kat Calvin Why Kat loves this book

Movements require strategy, planning, and patience. This book offers case studies of some of the best-known movements of the modern age and shows how none of them happened by accident.

This book is a must read for anyone who wants to make real change.

By Mark Stengler , Paul Engler ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked This Is an Uprising as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

There is a craft to uprising,and this craft can change the worldFrom protests around climate change and immigrant rights, to Occupy, the Arab Spring, and #BlackLivesMatter, a new generation is unleashing strategic nonviolent action to shape public debate and force political change. When mass movements erupt onto our television screens, the media consistently portrays them as being spontaneous and unpredictable. Yet, in this book, Mark and Paul Engler look at the hidden art behind such outbursts of protest, examining core principles that have been used to spark and guide moments of transformative unrest.With incisive insights from contemporary activists, as well…


If you love Micro Activism...

Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

Book cover of The Ralph Nader Reader

Kat Calvin Author Of American Identity in Crisis: Notes from an Accidental Activist

From my list on how to change the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an activist and always have been. My organizations, Spread The Vote + Project ID and Project ID Action Fund work on the ground and on impactful policy nationwide. I would never have been able to build a movement or an organization that makes a real impact without the lessons that I have learned from the past. Every book I have read about how change was made before me has helped me do the work I do and my hope is that future leaders will learn these lessons too.

Kat's book list on how to change the world

Kat Calvin Why Kat loves this book

Few people have made the types of significant legislative changes that have improved the lives of Americans as Ralph Nader has.

Every time we put on a seatbelt or are saved by an airbag, we have him to thank. The Nader reader has some of Ralph’s best writings, including many about how Americans should be involved in their government to make sure that our Democracy keeps working.

By Ralph Nader ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Ralph Nader Reader as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Four generations of Americans have come to associate Ralph Nader with the political issues that have defined our age, be it car safety in the 1960s or the anti-WTO demonstrations that recently shut down Seattle. His work has successfully shaped the Left, increased government accountability, made possible new laws, and served as a powerful check against abuses of corporate power. In this landmark collection, the essays that reveal the intellectual, social, and political underpinnings of this legendary citizen advocate are brought together for the first time.
In The Ralph Nader Reader, we follow the trajectory of Nader's concerns from 1956…


Book cover of The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America

Kat Calvin Author Of American Identity in Crisis: Notes from an Accidental Activist

From my list on how to change the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an activist and always have been. My organizations, Spread The Vote + Project ID and Project ID Action Fund work on the ground and on impactful policy nationwide. I would never have been able to build a movement or an organization that makes a real impact without the lessons that I have learned from the past. Every book I have read about how change was made before me has helped me do the work I do and my hope is that future leaders will learn these lessons too.

Kat's book list on how to change the world

Kat Calvin Why Kat loves this book

Progress is never a straight line; it usually takes the form of two steps forward and one step back. As we continue to fight battles we thought we’d won, this account of the long and unsteady march toward civil rights can give us direction, inspiration, and hope.

By Philip A. Klinkner , Rogers M. Smith ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Unsteady March as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

American life is filled with talk of progress and equality, especially when the issue is that of race. But has the history of race in America really been the continuous march toward equality we'd like to imagine it has? This sweeping history of race in America argues quite the opposite; that progress toward equality has been sporadic, isolated, and surrounded by long periods of stagnation and retrenchment.


If you love Omkari L. Williams...

Book cover of The Last Whaler

The Last Whaler by Cynthia Reeves,

This book is an elegiac meditation on the will to survive. Tor, a beluga whaler, and his wife, Astrid, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station in the Svalbard archipelago when they misjudge ice conditions and fail to…

Book cover of Awearness: Inspiring Stories about How to Make a Difference

Kat Calvin Author Of American Identity in Crisis: Notes from an Accidental Activist

From my list on how to change the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an activist and always have been. My organizations, Spread The Vote + Project ID and Project ID Action Fund work on the ground and on impactful policy nationwide. I would never have been able to build a movement or an organization that makes a real impact without the lessons that I have learned from the past. Every book I have read about how change was made before me has helped me do the work I do and my hope is that future leaders will learn these lessons too.

Kat's book list on how to change the world

Kat Calvin Why Kat loves this book

This has always been one of my favorite books. It’s more of a guide and it’s one of the best ways I have ever seen anyone lay out specific ways that people can get involved with specific examples and organizations.

It’s quite old and may not be completely useful as a guide (although many of the organizations still exist and the case studies and stories still hold up for the most part). Still, it is an example of how to create a clear and actionable guidebook; there is no better example.

By Kenneth Cole ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Awearness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Faced with global issues such as poverty, genocide, and climate change, it's easy to feel powerless. We want to do good and change the world, but too often feel paralyzed by the fear that individuals can't make significant impact. Awearness: Inspiring Stories About How to Make a Difference is a wake-up call--a call to action, to volunteerism, and to each and every person's unique ability to help build a better world.

Edited by longtime advocate and designer Kenneth Cole, Awearness is an engaging, informative, and empowering collection of eighty-six stories and conversations by ninety individuals, some well-known and others less…


Book cover of Generation Brave: The Gen Z Kids Who Are Changing the World

Rochelle Melander Author Of Mightier Than the Sword: Rebels, Reformers, and Revolutionaries Who Changed the World Through Writing

From my list on anthologies for young activists.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a writer, I’ve found that learning about other writers and their processes helps me. Over the years, I’ve devoured the memoirs and letters of writers like Madeleine L’Engle, Audre Lorde, and Zora Neal Hurston. In 2006, when I started a writing program for young people in my city, I brought these writers’ words to use as writing prompts. When I researched my book, Mightier Than the Sword, I read dozens of anthologies to find people who used writing to make a difference in their fields—science, art, politics, music, and sports. I will always be grateful for those anthologies—because they broadened my knowledge and introduced me to so many interesting people.

Rochelle's book list on anthologies for young activists

Rochelle Melander Why Rochelle loves this book

The first generation of young people raised on the internet has faced gun violence, climate change, and a pandemic. They also understand diversity, are adept at digital platforms, and want to change the world. The inspiring stories in this book gave me the good kind of chills. These young people are marching for social justice, working to change laws, giving speeches, starting nonprofits, and more. But they need your help. After you read this, you’ll be inspired to make a difference, too.

By Kate Alexander ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Generation Brave as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An illustrated celebration of Gen Z activists fighting to make our world a better place.

Gen Z is populated-and defined-by activists. They are bold and original thinkers and not afraid to stand up to authority and conventional wisdom. From the March for Our Lives to the fight for human rights and climate change awareness, this generation is leading the way toward truth and hope like no generation before.

Generation Brave showcases Gen Z activists who are fighting for change on many fronts: climate change, LGBTQ rights, awareness and treatment of mental illness, gun control, gender equality, and corruption in business…


Book cover of Moments of Silence: The Unforgetting of the October 6, 1976, Massacre in Bangkok

Shane Strate Author Of The Lost Territories: Thailand's History of National Humiliation

From my list on how states manipulate historical memory.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a teacher and historian, I’m interested in the collision of cultures that resulted from western intervention in Asia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For young Asian nationalists, historical writing was a weapon to be wielded in the fight against imperialism. It is equally important for us to understand the forces that shape our collective memories and to recognize that historians don’t just uncover the past—they produce it. 

Shane's book list on how states manipulate historical memory

Shane Strate Why Shane loves this book

What happens when a society is unwilling to acknowledge acts of barbarism in its past? In 1976, while leading a student protest at Thammasat University, Thongchai Winichakul watched in horror as government forces and rightist elements stormed the campus, killing over eighty of his fellow students and committing unspeakable acts on the living and the dead. He wrote this book to help process memories of an atrocity that took the lives of his friends and haunted his career as a Thai historian. To this day, the Thammasat massacre is marked only by silence from official sources. As a result, Thongchai observes that Thai society is trapped in a state of ‘unforgetting,’ unable to either remember or forget the trauma.

By Thongchai Winichakul ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Moments of Silence as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The massacre on October 6, 1976, in Bangkok was brutal and violent, its savagery unprecedented in modern Thai history. Four decades later there has been no investigation into the atrocity; information remains limited, the truth unknown. There has been no collective coming to terms with what happened or who is responsible. Thai society still refuses to confront this dark page in its history.

Moments of Silence focuses on the silence that surrounds the October 6 massacre. Silence, the book argues, is not forgetting. Rather it signals an inability to forget or remember-or to articulate a socially meaningful memory. It is…


If you love Micro Activism...

Book cover of White Picket Fences

White Picket Fences by Kyle Ann Robertson,

Tina Edwards loved her childhood and creating fairy houses, a passion shared with her father, a world-renowned architect. But at nine years old, she found him dead at his desk and is haunted by this memory. Tina's mother abruptly moved away, leaving Tina with feelings of abandonment and suspicion.

Raised…

Book cover of Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Payá and his Daring Quest for a Free Cuba

Ilan Ehrlich Author Of Eduardo Chibás: The Incorrigible Man of Cuban Politics

From my list on biographies peeking into the lives of Cuban people.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was weaned on Cuban stories by my Havana-born mother and first visited the island in 1998. Since then, I earned a PhD in history from the Graduate Center, City University of New York–where I studied twentieth-century Cuban politics. While conducting research in Havana and Miami, I confirmed that legends were imbibed with the same fervor as café cubano. All histories are marked by tall tales, but Cubans are governed by theirs, inside and out, more than most. 

Ilan's book list on biographies peeking into the lives of Cuban people

Ilan Ehrlich Why Ilan loves this book

To some, Cuba is a plucky, embargo-defying success story, with top educational and medical systems – the latter of which ensures Cubans live longer on average than Americans. Hoffman’s biography of Oswaldo Payá lays bare the regime’s darkest depths. As a young man, Payá was harassed and persecuted for his Catholic faith. He later devised the Varela Project, which sought to legally change Cuba’s 1976 constitution and allow democratic freedoms. Payá remained an outspoken critic of Cuba’s one-party state and refused to leave despite constant threats from state security agents. In 2012, they ran his car off the road and he was killed in the ensuing crash.  

By David E. Hoffman ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Give Me Liberty as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporter David E. Hoffman comes the riveting biography of Oswaldo Payá, a dissident who dared to defy Fidel Castro, inspiring thousands of Cubans to fight for democracy.

Oswaldo Payá was seven years old when Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, promising to create a “free, democratic, and just Cuba.” But Castro instead created an authoritarian regime with little tolerance of free speech or thought. His secret police were trained to crush dissent by East Germany’s ruthless Stasi.

Throughout Cuba’s 20th century history, the dream of democracy was often just within reach, only to…


Book cover of Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era

Alexander Sedlmaier Author Of Protest in the Vietnam War Era

From my list on the international dimensions of the Vietnam War.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a historian and someone who grew up in Cold War Berlin, I am constantly inspired by efforts to curb the devastating effects of industrialised warfare. I love learning about people who had the courage to speak up, and how their historical understanding of the military abuse of power enables us to think differently about present-day warfare. So much of my research has been inspired by social movements and their difficult efforts to improve the world. While I am no expert on Vietnamese history, I have been fortunate to have learned a lot about how ingenious the Vietnamese revolutionaries were in actively pedalling the global emergence of Vietnam War protest. 

Alexander's book list on the international dimensions of the Vietnam War

Alexander Sedlmaier Why Alexander loves this book

What happened when US activists travelled to Asia during the Vietnam War?

This is the question Wu seeks to answer in one of the most important books on internationalism and Vietnam War protest. She looks at how they sympathised and identified with anti-imperialist struggles in Asia, inverting an orientalist dichotomy between imperial America and decolonising Asia “whereby the decolonizing East helped to define the identities and goals of activists in the West.”

This was one of the books that first got me interested in understanding why ethnically diverse protesters responded to the Vietnam War the way they did, and how activists’ travel fostered the imagination of new political possibilities and alternative means of political articulation as they transcended ethnic and racial backgrounds.

By Judy Tzu-Chun Wu ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Radicals on the Road as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Traveling to Hanoi during the U.S. war in Vietnam was a long and dangerous undertaking. Even though a neutral commission operated the flights, the possibility of being shot down by bombers in the air and antiaircraft guns on the ground was very real. American travelers recalled landing in blackout conditions, without lights even for the runway, and upon their arrival seeking refuge immediately in bomb shelters. Despite these dangers, they felt compelled to journey to a land at war with their own country, believing that these efforts could change the political imaginaries of other members of the American citizenry and…


Book cover of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity

Dannagal Goldthwaite Young Author Of Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation

From my list on understanding identity-driven wrongness in the United States.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a professor of communication and political science who’s been researching and publishing on the effects of political media on democratic health for 25 years. More recently, I’ve been trying to understand the roots of inter-party hostility, the drop in trust in institutions, and the rise in Americans’ belief in breathtakingly false information. My hope is that through this selection of books, you’ll start to understand the synergistic dynamics between America’s complicated history with race, changes in America’s parties, media, and culture, and various social psychological processes, and maybe even start to see a way out of this mess.

Dannagal's book list on understanding identity-driven wrongness in the United States

Dannagal Goldthwaite Young Why Dannagal loves this book

I literally could not have written my book without Mason’s incredible empirical work documented in this book. 

Yes, this is an academic book, but Mason is engaging, clear, and masterful in her use of charts and graphs to illustrate what “social sorting” is and what it does. Whenever I explain to people how America’s political parties have come to represent not just different sets of policy positions but two very different types of people, I picture Mason’s charts and graphs in my head!

There are a few books that I cannot put back on my bookshelf because I cite them too often and have decided they just need to stay right on my desk, Lily Mason’s is at the top of this pile.

By Lilliana Mason ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Uncivil Agreement as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Political polarization in America is at an all-time high, and the conflict has moved beyond disagreements about matters of policy. For the first time in more than twenty years, research has shown that members of both parties hold strongly unfavorable views of their opponents. This is polarization rooted in social identity, and it is growing. The campaign and election of Donald Trump laid bare this fact of the American electorate, its successful rhetoric of "us versus them" tapping into a powerful current of anger and resentment. With Uncivil Agreement, Lilliana Mason looks at the growing social gulf across racial, religious,…


If you love Omkari L. Williams...

Book cover of The Duke's Christmas Redemption

The Duke's Christmas Redemption by Arietta Richmond,

A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.

Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…

Book cover of Malala: Activist for Girls' Education

Anne Broyles Author Of Priscilla and the Hollyhocks

From my list on real-life children who overcame hardships.

Why am I passionate about this?

Ever since I read Island of the Blue Dolphins in 5th grade I’ve loved historical fiction. I am inspired by amazing humans who lived across centuries and around the globe and left their mark on the world. My 2023 book I’m Gonna Paint: Ralph Fasanella, Artist of the People is about a social activist artist. Future published books include middle grade novels on the 1838 Trail of Tears, a day on Ellis Island in 1907, and a 1935 book about Eleanor Roosevelt and the planned community of Arthurdale, WV. Like I said, I love exploring history! I read in many genres, but still enjoy learning about history through fiction.

Anne's book list on real-life children who overcame hardships

Anne Broyles Why Anne loves this book

Malala Yousafzai inspires me because she never lost sight of the importance of education and continues to work for justice in the world. Malala was a young student in Pakistan when the Taliban took over her nation and prohibited girls from going to school. Malala spoke out against Taliban actions, advocating for universal education. That was enough to make the Taliban afraid of her. They tried to kill her; she almost died in the attempted assassination. That would have caused many people to retreat in fear, but not Malala. Once she recovered, she became an even more outspoken activist for female education and won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. 

By Raphaële Frier , Aurélia Fronty (illustrator) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Malala as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 6, 7, 8, and 9.

What is this book about?

"A realistic and inspiring look at Malala Yousafzai's childhood in Taliban-controlled Pakistan and her struggle to ensure education for girls" — Kirkus Reviews

Malala Yousafzai stood up to the Taliban and fought for the right for all girls to receive an education. When she was just fifteen-years old, the Taliban attempted to kill Malala, but even this did not stop her activism. At age eighteen Malala became the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work to ensure the education of all children around the world.

Malala’s courage and conviction will inspire young readers in this…


Book cover of This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century
Book cover of The Ralph Nader Reader
Book cover of The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America

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