Book Discussion

And How to Stop Them

by Barbara F. Walter

Political violence rips apart several towns in southwest Texas. A far-right militia plots to kidnap the governor of Michigan and try her for treason. An armed mob of Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists storms the U.S. Capitol. Are these isolated incidents? Or is this the start of something bigger? Barbara F. Walter has spent her career studying civil conflict in places like Iraq, Ukraine, and Sri Lanka, but now she has become increasingly worried about her own country.

Barbara F. Walter is the Rohr Professor of International Relations at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Walter helps to run the award-winning blog Political Violence at a Glance and has written for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, and Foreign Affairs.

[from the Penguin Random House website]

How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy

by Dominic Erdozain

More than 130 lives are lost to firearms every day in America (according to the CDC). Citizens are forced to live with the fear, the anxiety, the dread of public spaces that an armed society has created under the banner of freedom. But the norms of today are not the norms of American history and do not reflect the values of our founders. They are the product of a gun culture that has, according to the author, imposed its vision on an unwitting nation.

Historian Dominic Erdozain argues that we have wrongly ceded the big-picture argument on guns: As we parse legislation on background checks and automatic-weapons bans, we fail to ask what place guns should have in a functioning democracy. 

by Tim Cullen

Former Wisconsin Senator Tim Cullen traces the history of gerrymandering in the state and details the decade-long efforts to end the insidious practice. "It's not a partisan issue," Cullen writes. "It's an abuse of power issue." Focusing on the legislature and state and federal courts he explains how, in 2011, partisan gerrymandering-drawing legislative districts nearly guaranteed one party control. [Little Creek Press]

by Heather Cox Richardson

If you prefer your historical perspective on the development and struggles of American democracy in small, digestible bites, you are ready for this book. HCR walks us from what she calls the first founding—the Declaration of Independence with its clear statement of equality and the compromises of the Constitution that continue to enshrine inequality—through efforts to make the Declaration a reality.

In a conversational tone the author takes us through the Civil War, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Act and efforts to overthrow a growing “liberal consensus” that government exists to promote the common good and work toward equality in a multiracial society. She highlights those who stood firm to preserve and advance American democracy in the face of growing inequality and divisiveness.

by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

From the New York Times bestselling authors of How Democracies Die, this book is a call to reform our antiquated political institutions that give unfair advantage to those in the minority. Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that the move toward a multiracial democracy in the United States has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the foundations of our political system. The authors explain why and how political parties turn against democracy, and suggest common-sense, though difficult to achieve, changes to our Constitution to prevent partisan minorities from ruling over popular majorities in our country.

by David McRaney

In our current polarized environment, conversations among people who do not agree can be challenging and disheartening. How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion explores the elements of human belief and why facts and logical arguments are not the pillars of persuasion that we hope them to be. Listening, it turns out, is a key element.

How Minds Change was the 2023-2024 Go Big Read book selection.

Poverty, By America

by Matthew Desmond

Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life

by Eric Klinenberg

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

by Jane Mayer

On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women’s Epic Fight to Build a Union

by Daisy Pitkin

The Night Watchman

by Louise Erdrich

Thank You for Voting: the Maddening, Enlightening, Inspiring Truth About Voting in America

by Erin Geiger Smith

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

by Isabel Wilkerson

The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

by Katherine Gehl & Michael Porter

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

by Matthew Desmond

This book was the 2017-2018 Go Big Read selection.

The Untold Story of Women of Color in the League of Women Voters

by Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins

How to Be an Antiracist

by Ibram X. Kendi

Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

by Kent Nerburn

One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy

by Carol Anderson

The Warmth of Other Suns

by Isabel Wilkerson

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

by Dan Egan

This book was the 2018-2019 Go Big Read selection.

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker

by Kathy Cramer