The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy [B0341]

2023 PB. An insider account of activists, politicians, educators, and everyday citizens working to change minds, bridge divisions, and fight for democracy-from disinformation fighters to a leader of Black Lives Matter to Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and more. By the best-selling author of Winners Take All and award-winning former New York Times columnist "Anand Giridharadas. Shows the way we get real progressive change in America-by refusing to write others off, building more welcoming movements, and rededicating ourselves to the work of changing minds." -Robert B. Reich. The lifeblood of any free society is persuasion: changing other people's minds in order to change things. But America is suffering a crisis of faith in persuasion that is putting its democracy and the planet itself at risk. Americans increasingly write one another off instead of seeking to win one another over. Debates are framed in moralistic terms, with enemies battling the righteous. Movements for justice build barriers to entry, instead of on-ramps. Political parties focus on mobilizing the faithful rather than wooing the skeptical. And leaders who seek to forge coalitions are labeled sellouts. As the book's subjects grapple with how to call out threats and injustices while calling in those who don't agree with them - but just might one day - they point a way to healing, and changing, a fracturing country.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "This was a life boat read. When I feel the weight of the growing divide between my fellow Americans to be more suffocating than ever, this book has reminded me that there are ways of thinking, communicating, and organizing that diminish the divide and strengthen the connective tissue between all of our humanity and value systems. The book was packed with journalistic reporting of all the examples over the past 4 or so years of people doing the work to call people in, instead of call people out and write them off- even when it can feel easier to do so or like the only option at all. I'm renewed with the faith that people can change."