DEMOCRACY LIBRARY
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Books recommended by Democracy University. Every purchase supports our work and independent bookstores — not Amazon.
Recommended reading
Every purchase through these links supports Democracy University and independent bookstores instead of Amazon.
Run to Win: Lessons in Leadership for Women Changing the World
by Stephanie Schriock with Christina Reynolds
The longtime EMILY's List president walks women through every stage of running — organized around the exact steps EMILY's List coaches its candidates through, from deciding to run to celebrating victory. Foreword by Kamala Harris.
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The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
by Heather McGhee
The former Demos president's landmark argument that racism drains the pool for everyone — and that the 'solidarity dividend' of multiracial coalitions is how we win better lives for all. Essential framing for cross-racial organizing.
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Represent: The Woman's Guide to Running for Office and Changing the World
by June Diane Raphael & Kate Black
A step-by-step workbook for women running for any of America's 500,000 elected offices — built around a 21-point checklist covering where to run, fundraising, family, and filing deadlines.
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The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart
by Alicia Garza
The Black Lives Matter cofounder on what it actually takes to build movements that last — why hashtags aren't organizing, and how power gets built through bases, coalitions, and hard conversations.
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Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism
by L.A. Kauffman
The definitive history of American direct action since the sixties — how blockades, sit-ins, and mass mobilizations evolved, and what organizers today inherit from that lineage.
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The Activist's Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century
by Randy Shaw
A veteran organizer's playbook for winning social change — tactical thinking on media, coalitions, elected officials, and ballot measures, tested over decades of housing and labor fights.
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We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump
by Leah Greenberg & Ezra Levin
From the Indivisible founders: how a Google Doc became thousands of local groups, and a practical guide to constituent power — organizing your community to hold elected officials accountable.
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Campaign Boot Camp 2.0: Basic Training for Candidates, Staffers, Volunteers, and Nonprofits
by Christine Pelosi
Basic training drawn from boot camps in over thirty states: seven steps from call to service through message, community, teams, money, and mobilization — with a 'Get Real' exercise closing every chapter.
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Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail
by Frances Fox Piven & Richard Cloward
The classic study of when poor people's movements win — and how they lose when disruption gets traded too early for organization-building. Movement strategy's most argued-about book, half a century on.
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What a Party!: My Life Among Democrats
by Terry McAuliffe
The legendary fundraiser and former DNC chair's rollicking memoir — a fly-on-the-wall education in how money, relationships, and relentless energy actually move Democratic politics.
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Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority
by Steve Phillips
The data-driven case that the path to progressive victory runs through investing in the New American Majority — voters of color and progressive whites — not chasing a mythical white swing voter. Revised and updated edition.
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When We're in Charge: The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership
by Amanda Litman
From the Run for Something cofounder: a candid guide to leading differently — for the next generation stepping into charge of campaigns, organizations, and movements.
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The Audacity to Win: How Obama Won and How We Can Beat the Party of Limbaugh, Beck, and Palin
by David Plouffe
The Obama 2008 campaign manager's inside account — strategy, discipline, grassroots scale, and message control on the campaign that rewrote the playbook.
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No, You Shut Up: Speaking Truth to Power and Reclaiming America
by Symone D. Sanders
From the youngest presidential press secretary in history: a rallying cry for new voices — especially young Black women — to stop waiting for permission, claim their seat at the table, and speak truth to power.
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For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics
by Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry & Minyon Moore
Four legendary Black women operatives — the 'Colored Girls' — on decades at the highest levels of Democratic politics: the DNC, presidential campaigns, and the White House. Living history of the professional pipeline.
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Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change
by Stacey Abrams
Abrams' leadership handbook for outsiders — how to turn otherness into strength, build power without inherited access, and lead with ambition when the room wasn't built for you.
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Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America
by Stacey Abrams
Abrams' blueprint for fair elections — how voter suppression actually operates, how to fight it, and how the New Georgia Project model turned registration and turnout into durable power.
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Tío Bernie: The Inside Story of How Bernie Sanders Brought Latinos Into the Political Revolution
by Chuck Rocha
The inside story of the historic Bernie 2020 Latino outreach operation from the strategist who built it — a masterclass in what happens when campaigns invest early, hire from the community, and treat Latino voters as persuadable base, not an afterthought.
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When We're in Charge: The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership
by Amanda Litman
A no-bullshit guide for the next generation of leaders on how to show up differently, break the cycle of bad Boomer leadership, and navigate the changing demands of those in power. Based on Amanda Litman's experience as cofounder of Run for Something, and informed by conversations with more than 100 next-gen leaders across politics, business, media, tech, and education — including Versha Sharma, Maxwell Frost, and Evan Spiegel.
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Democracy in One Book or Less: How It Works, Why It Doesn't, and Why Fixing It Is Easier Than You Think
by David Litt
A funny, clear-eyed tour of how American democracy actually works and where it's broken — the right first book for a new volunteer who wants to understand the system they're fighting for.
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100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting
by E.J. Dionne Jr. & Miles Rapoport
The argument for making voting universal — treating participation as a civic duty like jury service, and the surest structural answer to voter suppression.
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People, Power, Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal
by Marshall Ganz
Ganz's definitive statement of the organizing framework he developed over sixty years — from the United Farm Workers to training generations of organizers: public narrative, relationship-building, strategy, and turning resources into the power to win.
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Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America
by Heather Cox Richardson
The historian behind America's most-read political newsletter traces how authoritarianism took root in American politics — and how ordinary people have reclaimed democracy before.
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On Freedom
by Timothy Snyder
The companion to On Tyranny: Snyder's positive case for what freedom actually requires — not just freedom from oppression, but the conditions that let people flourish and self-govern.
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The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns
by Sasha Issenberg
How randomized experiments and data analytics transformed campaigning — the story behind the tools every modern field and targeting program now takes for granted.
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Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything
by Becky Bond & Zack Exley
The 'big organizing' playbook from the architects of the Bernie 2016 distributed volunteer program: how to hand real work to volunteers at massive scale instead of hoarding it on staff.
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Fundraising for Social Change
by Kim Klein
The grassroots fundraising bible, now in its seventh edition — how organizations build a broad base of individual donors who fund the work and own the mission.
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Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict
by Erica Chenoweth & Maria J. Stephan
The landmark research showing nonviolent campaigns succeed twice as often as violent ones — home of the famous 3.5% participation finding that shapes pro-democracy strategy worldwide.
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Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
by Anne Applebaum
How modern autocracies operate as a networked industry — sharing money, surveillance, and propaganda tactics — and what it takes to push back.
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The ALL NEW Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate
by George Lakoff
The classic on framing — why voters decide on values before facts, and how to communicate a moral vision instead of a laundry list of policies. The updated and expanded edition.
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Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest
by Zeynep Tufekci
Why digitally-fueled movements can scale overnight yet struggle to win — essential reading on the difference between mobilizing attention and building organized power.
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The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy
by Anand Giridharadas
Inside the work of organizers and communicators who still believe minds can be changed — deep canvassing, difficult conversations, and persuasion as democratic practice.
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Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
by adrienne maree brown
A widely influential approach to movement work rooted in adaptation, relationship, and small actions that compound — strategy for organizers thinking in ecosystems, not org charts.
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Groundbreakers: How Obama's 2.2 Million Volunteers Transformed Campaigning in America
by Elizabeth McKenna & Hahrie Han
The definitive study of the Obama field program — how it built a volunteer organization of millions by investing in leadership development, not just contact numbers.
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Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals
by Jonathan Smucker
A practical guide to political struggle that confronts movements' self-defeating tendencies head-on — and offers tools for actually contesting and winning power.
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Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
by Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba
On sustaining organizers and each other for the long haul — practical wisdom on burnout, grief, mutual aid, and staying in the work when the odds feel impossible.
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The Fight to Vote
by Michael Waldman
From the Brennan Center's president: the full history of the struggle over who gets to vote in America, updated through the 2020 election and the current wave of restrictions.
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One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
by Carol Anderson
A National Book Critics Circle finalist on how modern voter suppression works — ID laws, purges, closures, gerrymanders — and the organizing that fights back.
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On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
by Timothy Snyder
Twenty lessons from the twentieth century on resisting authoritarianism — the pocket handbook of the moment.
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This Is an Uprising
by Mark Engler & Paul Engler
How nonviolent movements combine mass protest with organization to win — the theory behind momentum organizing.
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Tyranny of the Minority
by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt
Why American institutions empower minority rule — and the reform agenda to fix it.
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Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout
by Donald Green & Alan Gerber
The gold-standard field-experiment research on which voter contact tactics actually move turnout.
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The Campaign Manager: Running and Winning Local Elections
by Catherine Shaw
The workhorse how-to manual for running local campaigns — budgets, targeting, field, and message.
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How Organizations Develop Activists
by Hahrie Han
The research on what separates organizations that develop leaders from those that just collect names.
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Organizing for Social Change: Midwest Academy Manual for Activists
by Kim Bobo, Jackie Kendall & Steve Max
The Midwest Academy manual — the definitive textbook on direct-action organizing, including the Strategy Chart.
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Politics Is for Power
by Eitan Hersh
The argument against political hobbyism — and for putting your hours into real local power building.
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No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age
by Jane McAlevey
The case for deep organizing over shallow mobilizing — how real power gets built through structure-based campaigns.
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Run for Something: A Real-Talk Guide to Fixing the System Yourself
by Amanda Litman
A practical, irreverent guide to running for local office from the Run for Something co-founder.
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Prisms of the People: Power and Organizing in Twenty-First-Century America
by Hahrie Han, Elizabeth McKenna & Michelle Oyakawa
Case studies of organizations that turn collective participation into durable political power.
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Rules for Radicals
by Saul Alinsky
The original community organizing text — tactics, power analysis, and rules that still shape the field.
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How Democracies Die
by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt
How elected leaders erode democracies from within — and the guardrails that hold them back.
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This is the plan
by Ben Wikler
It is fun, funny, informative, and offers incredible lessons learned from Bens time as organizer and party leader. I can not recommend this book more highly. Get a copy today!
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