End Your Year with Book Recommendations from Our 7 Questions Participants!
Throughout the year, we’ve been lucky enough to speak with so many people who are experts across many different fields as part of our 7 Questions series. These folks made some book recommendations that we want to highlight and share with you.
Below we’ve featured a book from each category that we think is particularly compelling, but each one presents unique and exciting ideas:
Women’s Issues:
- Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit: A collection of essays that makes for a quick but powerful read, “Men Explain Things to Me” grapples with an experience all too familiar to women all over the world. Solnit addresses day-to-day interactions between men and women but also larger trends of systematic violence against women to anchor her lighter anecdotes.
- The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates
- Sex and World Peace by Valerie Hudson, Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Mary Caprioli, and Chad Emmett
Fiction:
- Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin: A story of love and desire that takes place in Paris in the 1950s, Giovanni’s Room grapples with sexuality, violence, and traditional values. Baldwin intertwines death and passion in a classic story for the LGBTQ community that is guranteed to keep you hooked.
- Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluge
Non-Fiction:
- The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation by Drew Westen: A dissection of psychology’s effects on elections, The Political Brain aims to understand the trade-off between logic and emotion in politics and why the latter invariably wins. Westen unpacks the trends of the past few decades that would prove shocking to many traditional political theorists.
- Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward
- The Rhetorical Presidency by Jeffrey Tulis
- Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America by John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
- Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
- The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
Biography:
- Timestamp: Musings of an Introverted Black Boy by Marcus Granderson: The only autobiography on this list, Timestamp features the story of a boy who struggles with racial discrimination, social anxiety, and romantic relationships. The author describes it as a “human” book for everyone, with themes of coming of age, identity, and so much more.
- Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Richard Nixon: A Life by John Farrell
- Cronkite by Douglas Brinkley
- Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
Strategy:
- How to Go Viral and Reach Millions: Top Persuasion Secrets from Social Media Superstars, Jesus, Shakespeare, Oprah, and Even Donald Trump by Joseph Romm: In How to Go Viral and Reach Millions, Romm explores the use of language and content to help you expand the reach of your social media use. Best of all, the case studies that Romm references prove that these methods are time-tested, some of them drawn from the Bard of Avon himself.
- How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations and Leadership in the 21st Century by Hahrie Han
- The Political Speechwriter’s Companion: A Guide for Writers and Speakers, Second Edition by Robert A. Lehrman and Eric L. Schnure
- Mechanical Bull: How You Can Achieve Startup Success by Cheryl Contee
- State Capture: How Conservatives, Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States — and the Nation by Alex Hertel-Fernandez
Can’t get enough strategy book recommendations? Check out some of our tips to get your 2020 digital campaign in the works!
If these book recommendations weren’t enough to keep you busy, check out the ones our staff recommended! If you’re looking for something a bit less attention-demanding (and less politically-oriented), check out our recommendations for non political tv shows!