The Best-Selling Democracy Books of All Time

A whip-smart combo of self-help and political manifesto that is perfect for anyone who wants to save our democracy but doesn’t know where to start. In today’s political climate, it’s hard not to get discouraged. Isolated, doom scrolling, lacking a sense of purpose or community...it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the dire state of American democracy and do nothing, because why try when the odds are never in our favor?

At this fragile moment in history, Emily Amick, lawyer and former counsel to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, alongside New York Times bestselling author and Betches Media cofounder Sami Sage, want to reframe civic engagement as a form of self-care: an assertion of one’s values and self-respect. This book is not just about voting, but about claiming your singular place in your country and community. Including real stories of regular people who have made a difference along with helpful exercises and quizzes, Democracy in Retrograde is a choose-your-own-adventure map to civic engagement that will help you:. *Define your values and passions. *Understand how the system works, so it’s easier to know how to change it. *Match your personality, skills, resources, and interests, to meaningful actions within your community. *Implement changes (big and small) that matter. *Build a civic life that’s sustainable and authentic to you, whether you have only a few minutes to spare or are ready to make a lifetime commitment. Democracy in Retrograde will help you learn about much more than just political action. This book will provide a new lens through which to see yourself: a new and powerful light which bridges the personal and the political. In the words of Joan Baez, action is the antidote to despair, and with this helpful guide, even if Mercury is in retrograde, our democracy doesn’t have to be.

An American poet writes a compilation of historical vignettes, discerning the future of our democracy by rediscovering the combative, instructive, fascinating past of tyranny and democracy. Just as DNA is interwoven in every aspect of the human body, tyranny and democracy have their historically distinctive DNA that have shaped our democracy today.

From Israel’s Ten Commandments, to the Athenian Constitution, to Rome’s Twelve Tables, to the overthrow of kings in England and America, Lyons traces democracy from its historical roots to the modern day, constructing a blueprint of what defines tyranny or democratic government in The DNA of Democracy. In this definitive guide, Richard C. Lyons documents the struggle for power between tyrants and heroes across time and place. Chronicling the acts of tyrants which are expressive of tyranny’s DNA, and the rebellions of heroes and the forms of law which are democracy’s DNA—Lyons outlines the roots of democracies, by telling the tales of tyrants who ironically gave them birth—births of rebellion! This book serves as a how to contemporary guide on identifying the menace of a tyrant when you see one!

A contemporary study of the early American nation and its evolving democracy, from a French aristocrat and sociologist. In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and ambitious civil servant, set out from post-revolutionary France on a journey across America that would take him 9 months and cover 7,000 miles. The result was Democracy in America, a subtle and prescient analysis of the life and institutions of 19th-century America.

Tocqueville looked to the flourishing deomcratic system in America as a possible model for post-revolutionary France, believing that the egalitarian ideals it enshrined reflected the spirit of the age and even divine will. His study of the strengths and weaknesses of an evolving democratic society has been quoted by every American president since Eisenhower, and remains a key point of reference for any discussion of the American nation or the democratic system. This new edition is the only one that contains all Tocqueville's writings on America, including the rarely-translated Two Weeks in the Wilderness, an account of Tocqueville's travels in Michigan among the Iroquois, and Excursion to Lake Oneida. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.