Reading list
Tools to think critically and strategically. Resistance requires knowledge, strategy, and adaptability, so learn from historical movements and real-world uprisings. Every authoritarian movement has been resisted before—these materials show how people fight back and win.
If you’re looking to understand, resist, and effectively combat authoritarianism, oppressive regimes, and systemic control, these books will help you build strategy, historical awareness, and resilience.
Practical Resistance & Organizing
This Is an Uprising by Mark Engler & Paul Engler
Breaks down how nonviolent resistance movements succeed. Real-world case studies on revolutions and mass mobilization.
The Anti-Fascist Handbook by Mark Bray
A deep dive into anti-fascist movements: their history, tactics, and how they fight fascism today.
Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky
The classic manual on grassroots organizing, direct action, and community mobilization.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm
Explores the ethics and necessity of militant direct action against climate-destroying corporations.
Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution by Andrew Boyd & Others
Tactical handbook for activism, creative protest strategies, and community organizing.
Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice by Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, and Elena R. Gutierrez
This book documents how women of color have led reproductive justice movements beyond pro-choice frameworks, integrating racial, economic, and social justice issues. It highlights grassroots activism, policy battles, and intersectional strategies, centering the voices of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian American feminists fighting for reproductive autonomy.
The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having–or Being Denied–an Abortion by Diana Greene Foster, Ph.D.
In-depth, data driven examination of the negative consequences for women who cannot get abortions and provides in controvertible evidence to refute the claim that abortion harms people.
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
This anthology critiques the nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC), arguing that reliance on foundation funding limits radical activism. Contributors examine how nonprofits depoliticize movements, prioritize donor interests, and reinforce systemic oppression. The book calls for grassroots, community-led organizing that resists co-optation and state control.
When They Call you a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele
A memoir by Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors, this book explores her personal journey, systemic racism, and the criminalization of Black activism. It connects her experiences with poverty, policing, and incarceration to broader struggles for Black liberation, challenging how Black resistance is framed as terrorism.
Understanding Authoritarianism & How It Takes Power
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
A short, urgent guide to resisting creeping authoritarianism based on lessons from the 20th century.
The Origins of Totalitarianism – Hannah Arendt
The definitive analysis of how totalitarian regimes (Nazi Germany, Stalinist USSR) gain and consolidate power.
How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley
Breaks down the ten tactics of fascism and how they’re used to dismantle democracy.
Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky & Edward S. Herman
Exposes how mass media manipulates the public to serve the interests of authoritarian states and corporations.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
Explains how governments use crises to seize power and dismantle democracy.
They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer
First-hand accounts of how ordinary Germans rationalized and accepted fascism.
Historical Resistance Movements & Strategies
Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath Our Feet by Will Hunt
Fascinating look at how underground networks (literally and figuratively) are used by resistance movements.
From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp
The blueprint for nonviolent revolution, used in multiple real-world revolts.
Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit
A book on why activism works, even when it seems hopeless.
Essential Dystopian Reading
1984 by George Orwell
Understand how surveillance states operate.
The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
A realistic look at a collapsing America and the survival strategies of a young Black woman trying to build a better future.
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
A visionary novel about climate catastrophe and geopolitical resistance.