These resources informed the ShowUp2Defend deck. Start with On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder and What Should Americans Do Now? by George Packer. Share widely.
Understanding the Moment
— Anne Applebaum (2024) [BOOK]
How autocratic governments — Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela — cooperate not through shared ideology but through shared determination to preserve power and wealth. Kleptocratic networks, surveillance technologies, and propagandists operate across regimes to undermine democracy. NYT Bestseller, Book of the Year: Economist & Financial Times.
Surviving Autocracy
— M. Gessen (2020) [BOOK]
Essential guide to understanding autocracy from someone who lived under Putin. Gessen identifies the autocratic attempt, the language of lies, and how institutions fail.
The Anxious Generation
— Jonathan Haidt (2024) [BOOK]
How smartphone-based childhood has eroded the face-to-face community and resilience that democracy depends on. Read alongside Putnam.
— Bruce Hoffman & Jacob Ware (2024) [BOOK]
The definitive account of far-right terrorism in the United States, from the KKK to January 6. Traces the ideology, tactics, and deep relationship between violent extremism and mainstream politics. Winner, 2025 Airey Neave Memorial Book Prize.
— Nancy MacLean (2017) [BOOK]
How Nobel Prize–winning economist James McGill Buchanan and Charles Koch built a 60-year stealth campaign to dismantle American democracy — eliminating unions, privatizing public services, suppressing voting, and rewriting the rules in favor of the wealthy. Finalist for the National Book Award.
What Should Americans Do Now?
— George Packer, The Atlantic (January 2026) [ARTICLE]
The essay that inspired this deck. “Trump is taking the country on a path to tyranny. The first obligation for each of us is to see it and name it.”
— Anthony Romero & David Remnick, The New Yorker Radio Hour (February 14, 2025) [PODCAST/INTERVIEW]
ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero tells David Remnick where we stand: “We're at the Rubicon. Whether we've crossed it remains to be seen.” On what happens if Trump simply ignores court orders — and why Romero says that would be the line. Essential listening.
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
— Timothy Snyder (2017) [BOOK]
Short, essential. Twenty concrete lessons from history on how democracies fail, and citizens resist. “Do not obey in advance” is lesson one. Start here.
Hope in the Dark
— Rebecca Solnit (2016) [BOOK]
“Hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency.” On why movements win in ways we don't expect and how to stay in it for the long haul.
Call Them by Their True Names
— Rebecca Solnit (2018) [BOOK]
Essays that name what is happening to America and insist that naming things clearly is itself a form of power.
The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future
— Joseph Stiglitz (2012) [BOOK]
Nobel Prize–winning economist Stiglitz shows how inequality is not inevitable but politically engineered — the wealthy use their power to shape laws, markets, and regulations in their favor. Winner, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice Book Award.
How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them
— Barbara F. Walter (2022) [BOOK]
A political scientist who studies civil wars worldwide applies her research to the United States. Sobering and essential.
The Historical Roots
— Michelle Alexander (2010) [BOOK]
Exposes how mass incarceration functions as a racial caste system. Essential context for understanding why the fight for constitutional rights is inseparable from racial justice.
The Origins of Totalitarianism
— Hannah Arendt (1951) [BOOK]
Dense but foundational. Mass loneliness as the precondition for authoritarianism. Chapters 12–13 are most relevant.
White Poverty
— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (2024) [BOOK]
How poor white and Black Americans have been divided against their own interests — and how fusion politics can change that.
Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present
— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (2020) [BOOK]
The definitive comparative study of authoritarian leaders. The playbook: propaganda, corruption, violence, and the cult of virility.
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
— George Packer (2013) [BOOK]
A landmark work of narrative journalism tracing the fraying of American institutions. Essential context for understanding how we got here.
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
— Robert D. Putnam (2000) [BOOK]
Putnam's landmark study of the decline of civic life in America. Essential for understanding why democracy is fragile and what rebuilding it actually requires.
Democracy Awakening
— Heather Cox Richardson (2023) [BOOK]
Traces the roots of authoritarian politics from the founders to January 6. Richardson shows Trump is not an aberration but an outcome.
How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them
— Jason Stanley (2018) [BOOK]
The ten pillars of fascist politics — and how they are being deployed in America today.
Tools for Nonviolent Action
Why Civil Resistance Works
— Erica Chenoweth & Maria J. Stephan (2011) [BOOK]
Nonviolent movements succeed at roughly twice the rate of violent ones. Chenoweth's “3.5% rule” is the data behind the conviction that mass turnout wins.
People, Power, Change
— Marshall Ganz (2024) [BOOK]
The architect of Obama's 2008 organizing model lays out the theory and practice of relational organizing.
Politics Is for Power
— Eitan Hersh (2020) [BOOK]
The data on how most political energy goes nowhere — and what actual organizing looks like instead.
From Dictatorship to Democracy
— Gene Sharp (1993) [BOOK]
Used by organizers in Serbia, Burma, Ukraine, and the Baltic states. Sharp's 198 methods of nonviolent action. The playbook for how movements actually win.
Talking Across Difference
The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More
— Jefferson Fisher (2025) [BOOK]
Be Calm, be Curious, be Clear. The most accessible conversation book — good for sharing with others.
— Rich Tafel (training program / book-in-progress)
Tafel's framework for “cultural translation” — listening for legitimate concerns across political divides and speaking to shared values. Extremism loses its grip when people feel genuinely heard.
Never Split the Difference
— Chris Voss (2016) [BOOK]
FBI hostage negotiator. You change minds by making people feel genuinely heard, not by arguing. Tactical empathy, mirroring.
Newsletters & Substacks
— Marc Elias
America's leading voting rights attorney tracks legal battles to protect elections in real time.
— Heather Cox Richardson
Nightly newsletter placing the day's news in historical context. Over 2 million readers.
— Rebecca Solnit
Solnit's newsletter on resistance, hope, and the work of showing up. Rooted in her decades of writing on movements and power.
— Bishop William Barber & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
A moral framework for resistance: these issues are not left vs. right, but right vs. wrong. Over 246,000 subscribers.
— Robert Reich
Daily newsletter exposing where power lies — and how it's used and abused. Former Secretary of Labor. Over 1.1 million subscribers.
— Micah L. Sifry
On democracy, organizing, movements, and technology. Tracks the intersection of civic power and digital tools. Over 11,000 subscribers.
— Timothy Snyder
Snyder's newsletter on history, freedom, and the present moment — essential context from the author of On Tyranny.
