Here are 100 books that The Unsteady March fans have personally recommended if you like The Unsteady March. 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 The Unsteady March...

Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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 Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World (without a Bullhorn)

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

Real change happens one person and one act at a time. Micro Activism teaches you how to make a difference wherever you are and whatever your circumstances.

This beautifully illustrated, friendly, and readable book is the perfect way to learn how to get started as an activist and how to build activism into your life every day.

By Omkari L. Williams ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

In this age of social justice, those who don't necessarily want to lead a movement or join a protest march are left wondering, "How can I make an impact?"

In Micro Activism, former political consultant turned activism coach Omkari Williams shares her expertise in empowering introverts and highly sensitive people to help each of us, no matter our temperament, find our most satisfying and effective activist role. Using Williams's Activist Archetype tool, readers discover their unique strengths and use this to develop a personal strategy. To ensure sustainable involvement, Williams encourages starting small, working collaboratively, and beginning locally.

Advice on…


If you love Philip A. Klinkner...

Book cover of Dark Fae Outcast

Dark Fae Outcast by Autumn M. Birt,

Trapped in our world, the fae are dying from drugs, contaminants, and hopelessness. Kicked out of the dark fae court for tainting his body and magic, Riasg only wants one thing: to die a bit faster. It’s already the end of his world, after all.

But while scoring his last…

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 Fools Rush In

Tom Schreck Author Of The Vegas Knockout

From my list on mysteries with a message.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve worked and taught in the field of human services for over 40 years. Helping people and creating nurturing communities isn’t always what it appears. It is mired in hypocrisy, inefficiency, and neglect and the people looking for help are often their own worst enemies. Still, there is something inherently good just in trying to reach out to the vulnerable and fight the injustice that surrounds us. Sometimes that fight is figurative and sometimes it is literal. I am also a black belt-trained martial artist, a boxer, and a world championship professional boxing official. I love the dichotomy of helping people and knowing how to fight.

Tom's book list on mysteries with a message

Tom Schreck Why Tom loves this book

This is a fun series. It starts off in the 50s in small-town Iowa with most of the small-time innocence that you’d imagine but Gorman likes to take a different look. He leads us through the era’s less-than-shining moments while we get to relive the 50s and early sixties.

In this one, a young Black civil rights worker turns up dead. Along the way, we learn about racism and the subtle forms it can take and how it can poison a whole community.

In the end, things are not what they seemed but it doesn’t change the facts about America during this era.

Message—People are people and fighting ignorance and hate is all our responsibility.

By Ed Gorman ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

In America's heartland, Sam seeks justice for a black college student who's found dead in a car trunk at the drive-in, while thousands gather in the nation's capital for the March on Washington with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.


Book cover of One Blood: Parting Words to the Church on Race and Love

MelindaJoy Mingo Author Of The Colors of Culture: The Beauty of Diverse Friendships

From my list on capturing how we learn to celebrate diversity.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by different cultures since I was 14 years old growing up in inner-city Chicago. My passion has given me a curious quest to travel the world and learn about different cultures. My friends have a tagline for me which is ‘From the Hood to Hanoi and All the Stops In Between’ because of my international teaching in Vietnam. As an adult who is now an international professor, sought-out global trainer, and cultural subject matter expert, my passion has increased for bringing an awareness to a broader audience about the beauty of diverse friendships. 

MelindaJoy's book list on capturing how we learn to celebrate diversity

MelindaJoy Mingo Why MelindaJoy loves this book

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a story about the redemptive love of a civil rights icon who was brutally beaten, threatened, and who lived through the era of civil rights unrest and huge racism. He marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and has received notable awards such as a noble peace prize.

His book is a fascinating read about a man who had every reason to hate white people along the journey or racism and civil unrest but instead chose the path of love and forgiveness. He has titled it One Blood as he believes that we all have things in common, even in the midst of suffering and pain, if we allow ourselves to grow through the suffering and become the mirror image of the hate and bitterness that we have received on the journey of life.

By John Perkins ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Dr. Perkins’ final manifesto on race, faith, and reconciliation

We are living in historic times. Not since the civil rights movement of the 60s has our country been this vigorously engaged in the reconciliation conversation. There is a great opportunity right now for culture to change, to be a more perfect union. However, it cannot be done without the church, because the faith of the people is more powerful than any law government can enact.

The church is the heart and moral compass of a nation. To turn a country away from God, you must sideline the church. To turn…


If you love The Unsteady March...

Book cover of Everyday Medical Miracles: True Stories from the Frontlines in Women’s Health Care

Everyday Medical Miracles by Joseph S. Sanfilippo (editor),

Frontiers of Women from the healthcare perspective. A compilation of 60 true short stories written by an extensive array of healthcare providers, physicians, and advanced practice providers.

All designed to give you, the reader, a glimpse into the day-to-day activities of all of us who provide your health care. Come…

Book cover of Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel’s Liberal Settler State

Ian Lustick Author Of Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality

From my list on origins of Israeli policies toward Palestinians.

Why am I passionate about this?

I began studying the Israeli-Palestinian relationship as an idealistic Brandeis University student living in Jerusalem in 1969, when I directly encountered the Palestinian problem and the realities of the occupation. Trained at Berkeley to be a political scientist I devoted my life to finding a path to a two-state solution. In 2010 I reached the tragic conclusion that the “point of no return” toward Israeli absorption of the occupied territories had indeed been passed. Bored with the ideas that my old way of thinking was producing, I forced myself to think, as Hannah Arendt advised, “without a bannister.” Paradigm Lost is the result.

Ian's book list on origins of Israeli policies toward Palestinians

Ian Lustick Why Ian loves this book

For the first eighteen years of Israel’s existence most Arabs in the country were ruled by a military administration. It was formally abolished only a year before the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 and the establishment of Israeli military rule in those territories. The story of that early military government is not well known, except by specialists. But with the publication of Shira Robinson’s book, based on declassified archival material, we now know the details of how Arab citizens of Israel were subordinated, exploited, and manipulated, under false rationales of security concerns, in order to bolster the political position of the dominant Labor Party, to advance Zionist goals of land acquisition and subsidization of Jewish settlement, and, as the title of the book suggests, to help present Israel as a “liberal” state while concealing its settler colonialist dynamics.

By Shira Robinson ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Following the 1948 war and the creation of the state of Israel, Palestinian Arabs comprised just fifteen percent of the population but held a much larger portion of its territory. Offered immediate suffrage rights and, in time, citizenship status, they nonetheless found their movement, employment, and civil rights restricted by a draconian military government put in place to facilitate the colonization of their lands. Citizen Strangers traces how Jewish leaders struggled to advance their historic settler project while forced by new international human rights norms to share political power with the very people they sought to uproot.

For the next…


Book cover of Origins of the Civil Rights Movements

James M. Jasper Author Of The Emotions of Protest

From my list on what drives protestors.

Why am I passionate about this?

James M. Jasper has written a number of books and articles on politics and social movements since the 1980s, trying to get inside them to see what participants feel and think. In recent years he has examined the many emotions, good and bad, involved in political engagement. He summarizes what he has learned in this short book, The Emotions of Protest, taking the reader step by step through the emotions that generate actions, to those that link us to groups, down to the emotional and moral impacts of social movements. The book is hopeful and inspiring but at the same time also clear-eyed about the limitations of protest politics.

James' book list on what drives protestors

James M. Jasper Why James loves this book

Although a little older, this remains in my view the best book on the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the heroic period of Dr. King and the student sit-ins. Born and raised in rural Mississippi during that time, Morris tells a rich story of the influence of religion: the songs, prayers, and scriptural references, but also the material resources such as churches to meet in, networks of preachers to spread information, and the conduit for funds to flow from more affluent Black communities to those battling on the frontline during the bloody fight for civil rights.

By Aldon D. Morris ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Origins of the Civil Rights Movements as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A “valuable, eye-opening work” (The Boston Globe) about the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s.

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Mrs. Rosa Parks, weary after a long day at work, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man…and ignited the explosion that was the civil rights movement in America. In this powerful saga, Morris tells the complete story behind the ten years that transformed America, tracing the essential role of the black community organizations that was the real power behind the civil rights movement. Drawing on interviews with more than fifty key leaders,…


Book cover of Salvador

Ryan Murdock Author Of Vagabond Dreams: Road Wisdom from Central America

From my list on Central America.

Why am I passionate about this?

Ryan Murdock is Editor-at-Large (Europe) for Outpost, Canada’s national travel magazine, and a weekly columnist for The Shift, an independent Maltese news portal. His feature articles have taken him across a remote stretch of Canada’s Northwest Territories on foot, into the Central Sahara in search of prehistoric rock art, and around Wales with a drug squad detective hunting for the real King Arthur.

Ryan's book list on Central America

Ryan Murdock Why Ryan loves this book

An account of El Salvador’s era of “disappearances” from one of the best non-fiction writers of her generation. Didion interviews the president, visits smoldering body dumps on the edge of San Salvador, and captures the atmosphere of revolution, civil strife, and Soviet-American rivalry that afflicted El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala in the 1980s. Essential reading for understanding the scars that continue to plague the region today.

By Joan Didion ,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

El Salvador, 1982, is at the height of a ghastly civil war. Joan Didion travels from battlefields to body dumps, interviews a puppet president, considers the distinctly Salvadorean meaning of the verb 'to disappear' and trains a merciless eye not only on the terror there but also on the depredations and evasions of US foreign policy. Salvador is a restless and unflinching masterclass in the art of reportage by one of the great literary stylists of the twentieth century.


If you love Philip A. Klinkner...

Book cover of Karl's War

Karl's War by Neil Spark,

Karl's War is a coming-of-age-meets-thriller set in Germany on the eve of Hitler coming to power. Karl – a reluctant poster boy for the Nazis – meets Jewish Ben and his world is up-turned.

Ben and his family flee to France. Karl joins the German army but deserts and finds…

Book cover of The Spook Who Sat by the Door

Rashad Harrison Author Of Our Man in the Dark

From my list on thrillers and mysteries inhabited by history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I read history to better understand myself, others, and the world around me; I write historical fiction to share what I have learned. At New York University, I was the Jacob K. Javits Fellow in fiction. In addition to Our Man in the Dark, I am the author of The Abduction of Smith and Smith, one of Huffington Post's 25 Necessary Books By Black Authors (2015), and Huffington Post's 50 Amazing Books By Black Authors from the Past Five Years (2019).

Rashad's book list on thrillers and mysteries inhabited by history

Rashad Harrison Why Rashad loves this book

In the late ’60s, Dan Freeman, a Black token hire at the CIA shares spy-craft with Black revolutionaries. The book may claim to be a satire, but it demands to be taken seriously. The historical implications of the novel are obvious; there are plenty of exhilarating thrills, and the writing bops with a jazz-like cool. The mystery, however, is subterranean and internal. Freeman has perfected many masks to survive in America, to infiltrate the CIA, and to earn the respect of revolutionaries. The amazing thing is that there is so much suspense in discovering which identity will truly take hold.

By Sam Greenlee ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Spook Who Sat by the Door as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A classic in the black literary tradition, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is both a comment on the civil rights problems in the United States in the late 1960s and a serious attempt to focus on the issue of black militancy.

Dan Freeman, the ""spook who sat by the door,"" is enlisted in the CIA's elitist espionage program. Upon mastering agency tactics, however, he drops out to train young Chicago blacks as ""Freedom Fighters"" in this explosive, award-winning novel.

As a story of one man's reaction to ruling-class hypocrisy, the book is autobiographical and personal. As a tale…


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 Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World (without a Bullhorn)

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