Learn More and Inspire Others to Choose Democracy
Welcome to our resource page. We hope you will find a book, an article, a documentary or a podcast from this list that will inspire and arm you to take action in protecting our precious democracy. We’ve listed them by categories: Democracy, Authoritarianism, The Powers Behind the Assault on Democracy, The Authoritarian Playbook, Protecting Democracy and Resisting Tyranny, Living Under Tyranny, and Tyranny in Fiction.
A Deeper Understanding
In his book, “On Tyranny,” Professor Timothy Snyder recommends spending more time reading “long articles” and to beware of the “spectacle” of the internet or television. He asks us to investigate on our own and seek the facts and the truth. He states, “it is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society.”
Bruce Bartlett writes in his book, “The Truth Matters,” that he personally relies on genuine academic professors at major universities for credible perspective on issues. He points out that these academics are specialists in their fields, have a reputation to protect and are accustomed to peer pressure from other department and universities to present information that can be backed up with footnotes, references, and other source that can verify the writers’ claims.
If you are just beginning to explore a deeper understanding of democracy, authoritarianism and the threat facing America, you may want to read these three books first:
How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Professors of Government, Harvard University.
How Facism Works by Jason Stanley, Professor of Philosophy, Yale University.
On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, Professor of History, Yale University.
Below are lists of recommended books, article, documentaries, films, podcast or TED TALKS are provided. If you have additions to the list you have found particularly helpful, please send your recommendations.
DEMOCRACY
• Democracy Rules, 1. Liberty, 2. Equality, 3. Uncertainty, book by Jan-Werner Muller, 2021
• These Truths: A History of the United States, book by Jill Lepore, 2019
• Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom, book by Condoleezza Rice, 2018
• Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787-1788, book by Pauline Maier, 2010
• The Spirit of Democracy – The Struggle to Build Free Societies, book by Larry Diamond, 2008
• On Democracy, book by Robert Dahl, 1998
• Democracy in America, book by Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835
• Economic Dignity, book by Gene Sperling, 2021
• Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom, book by Condoleezza Rice, 2018
• Democracy: A World Made New – Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, book by Mary Ann Glendon, 2002
• Democracy and Human Rights, book by David Beetham, 1999
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations Charter, 1948
• Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump, book by Karen J. Greenberg, 2021
• The Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy, book by Suzanne Mettler and Robert Lieberman, 2020
• How Democracies Die, book by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, 2018
• How Democracy Ends, book by David Runciman, 2018
Authoritarianism
• Strongmen – Mussolini to the Present, book by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, 2020
• Authoritarianism – What Everyone Needs to Know, book by Erica Franz, 2018
• The Dictator’s Handbook – Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, book by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith, 2011
• The Authoritarians, book by Bob Altemeyer, 2007
• Hitler’s Beneficiaries – How the Nazis Bought the German People, book by Gotz Aly, 2005
• Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, book by Juan J. Linz, 2000
• The True Believer – Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, book by Eric Hoffer, 1951
• The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats are Reinventing Politics, book by Moises Naim, 2022
• The Enablers – How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption – Endangering Our Democracy, book by Frank Vogel, 2022
• Twilight of Democracy – The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, book by Anne Applebaum, 2020
• The Road to Unfreedom – Russia, Europe & America, book by Timothy Snyder, 2018
• The Future is History – How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, book by Masha Gessen, 2017
• The Post-Communist Mafia State – The Case of Hungary, book by Balint Magyar, 2016
• Political Order and Political Decay – From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy, book by Francis Fukuyama, 2015
• Field Notes on Democracy – Listening to Grasshoppers, book by Arundhati Roy, 2010
• The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, book by Fareed Zakaria, 2003
• The Fascism This Time – and the Global Future of Democracy, book by Theo Horesh, 2020
• Populocracy, book by Catherine Fieschi, 2019
• How Fascism Works – The Politics of Us and Them, book by Jason Stanley, 2018
• Why Fascism is so Tempting – and How Your Data Could Power It, You Tube video by Yuval N. Harari, 2018
• Fascism – A Warning, book by Madeleine Albright, 2018
• To Fight Against this Age – On Fascism and Humanism, book by Rob Riemen, 2018
• What is Populism?, book by Jan-Werner Muller, 2016
The Powers Behind the Assault on Democracy
• Surviving Autocracy, book by Masha Gessen, 2020
• The Fascism This Time and the Global Future of Democracy, book by Theo Horesh, 2020
• It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump, book by Stuart Stevens, 2020
• Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right, book by Cynthia Miller-Idriss, 2020
• American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme, book by Casey Michel, 2021
• On Corruption in America: And What is at Stake, book by Sarah Chayes, 2020
• Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality, book by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, 2020
• Requiem for the American Dream, the Ten Principles of the Concentration of Wealth and Power, book by Nom Chomsky, 2017
• Democracy in Chains, The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, book by Nancy MacLean, 2017
• Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World, book by Leif Wenar, 2016
• The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, book by Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry, 2022
• The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, book by Mark A. Knoll, 2022 (updated from 1994)
• Controlling Women: What We Must Do Now to Save Reproductive Freedom, book by Kathryn Kolbert and Julie Kay, 2021
• The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, book by Frances Fitzgerald, 2018
• American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, book by Chris Hedges, 2008
• American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money, book by Kevin Phillips, 2007
The Authoritarian Playbook
• The Agenda: How the Supreme Court is Reshaping America, book by Ian Millhiser, 2021
• The Republican War on Science, book by Chris Mooney, 2006
• A Brief History of Fascist Lies, book by Federico Finchelstein, 2022
• This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, book by Peter Pomerantsev, 2020
• Donald Trump’s Assault on Truth: The President’s Falsehoods, Misleading Claims, and Outright Lies, book by Glenn Kessler and the Staff of the Washington Post, 2020
• The Death of Truth, book by Michiko Kakutani, 2018
• Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era, book by Daniel Levitin, 2017
• How Propaganda Works, book by Jason Stanley, 2016
• The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World, book by Peter Bergen, 2022
• Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump, book by Karen Greenberg, 2021
• Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom, book by Philip Hamburger, 2021
• Attacks on the Press: The New Face of Censorship, book by the Committee to Protect Journalists, 2017
• Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration, book by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear, 2019
• Laboratories of Autocracy: A Wake-up Call from Behind the Lines, book by David Pepper, 2021
• Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy, book by Richard Hasen, 2020
• Uncounted: The Crisis with Voter Suppression in America, book by Gilda Daniels, 2020
• One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy, book by Carol Anderson, 2018
• How to Rig and Election, book by Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas, 2018
Tyranny in the United States
Living Under Tyranny Around the Globe
• This is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman, book by Ilhan Omar, 2020 [Somalia]
• Riot Days (Pussy Riot), book by Maria Alyokhina, 2017 [Russia]
• In Order to Live, book by Yeonmi Park, 2016 [North Korea]
• The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea, book by Hyeonseo Lee, 2016 [North Korea]
• Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, book by Barbara Demick, 2010
• I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, book by Malala Yousafzai, 2008 [Pakistan]
• How I Survived a Chinese “Reeducation” Camp: A Uyghur Woman’s Story, book by Gulbahar Haitiwaji, 2022
• Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing up in the Shadow of Sadam, book by Zainab Salbi, 2006 [Iraq]
• What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance, book by Carolyn Forche, 2019 [El Salvador]
• The Dictator’s Shadow: Life Under Augusto Pinochet, book by Heraldo Munoz, 2008 [Chile]
• Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa, book by Paul Kenyon, 2019
• When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa, book by Peter Godwin, 2007 [Zimbabwe]
• Long Walk to Freedom, Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, book by Nelson Mandela, 1995 [South Africa]
Tyranny in Fiction
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin, book by Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1853
• I, Claudius, book by Robert Graves, 1934
• The Oppermanns, book by Lion Feuchtwanger, 1934
• It Can’t Happen Here, book by Sinclair Lewis, 1935
• Darkness at Noon, book by Arthur Koestler, 1941
• Every Man Dies Alone – book by Hans Fallada, 1947
• 1984, book by George Orwell, 1949
• Fahrenheit 451, book by Ray Bradbury, 1951
• Rhinoceros, play by Eugene Ionesco, 1960
• Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale, book by Art Spiegelman, 1975
• The Man in the High Castle, book by Philip Dick, 1961
• The Handmaid’s Tale, book by Margaret Atwood, 1985
• Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale, book by Art Spiegelman, 1987
• Death of the Maiden, play by Ariel Dorfman, 1991
• Song of Ice and Fire Series (Game of Thrones), books by George R. Martin, 1996-2011
• Harry Potter Series (Lord Valdemort), books by J.K. Rowling, 1997-2007
• The Plot Against America, book by Philip Roth, 2004
• The Hunger Games I, book by Suzanne Collins, 2008
• Caging Skies (Jo-Jo Rabbit), book by Christine Leunens, 2008
• The Underground Railroad, book by Colson Whitehead, 2016
Protecting Democracy/Resisting Tyranny
• Our Time is Now, book by Stacey Abrams, 2021
• Controlling Women: What We Must Do Now to Save Reproductive Freedom, book by Kathryn Kolbert and Julie Kay, 2021
• Say It Louder: Black Voters, White Narratives and Saving Our Democracy, book by Tiffany Cross, 2020
• Empowering Public Wisdom: A Practical Vision of Citizen-Led Politics, book by Tom Atlee, 2012
• 12 Ways to Save Democracy in Wisconsin, book by Matthew Rothschild, 2021
• Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College, book by Jesse Wegman, 2020
• How to Save a Constitutional Democracy, book by Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq, 2018
• Ten Steps to Repair American Democracy, book by Steven Hill, 2012
• Survive and Resist: The Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics, book by Amy Atchison and Shauna Shames, 2019
• Resistance: Reclaiming an American Tradition, book by Jeff Biggers, 2018
• Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, book by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, 2011
• Oriana Fallaci: The Journalist, the Agitator, the Legend, book by Cristina de Stefano, 2017
• Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know, book by Erica Chenoweth, 1991
• From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation, book by Gene Sharp, 2002
Do you have recommendations for additional resources? Please send us your suggestions!
Nonpartisan Resource & Guide