Let’s face it. The 2016 election changed the face of political campaigns as we know it. We saw a foreign power intervene in our election through targeted digital advertising, a political campaign build psychological profiles on a huge proportion of the electorates from their Facebook likes, and one of the most expensive elections to date. Not to mention multiple political scandals (If I hear “but her emails” one more time…..), an Independent nearly unseating the Democratic frontrunner (yes, I still #FeelTheBern), and upsets in dependably Democratic states.
The 2016 Election was anything but ordinary, but the likelihood is that this model of chaos politics is becoming more of the norm in political campaigns.
One good thing that came out of this election is the amount of Millennials and Gen Z that are getting involved in politics for the first time. Whether it is subscribing to The Skimm for your daily news briefing, marching in your city for a cause you believe in, or running for office (Shout out to Run for Something for recruiting 18,000 young progressives interested in running for down-ballot races!), our generation is stepping up and making our voices heard.
As we look forward to the 2020 election, now is the time to get educated!
If you want to take the first step in getting educated before the next election, here are the top 5 political books every 20 something should read:
1. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance. Get it here!
If you were active in the political space after the 2016 Election, you probably have heard of this book. In fact, it was named one of the 6 books to help understand Trump’s win. If you haven’t taken the time to read it, stop what you are doing immediately and purchase this book. Hillbilly Elegy is a brilliantly narrated portrayal of white working-class Americans through the personal experience of the author. Vance’s description of his life of growing up in Appalachia to eventually becoming a graduate of Yale Law School brilliantly articulates why rural white voters felt that the political system abandoned them and primed them for a candidate like Trump. Not all is bright and cheery in Vance’s story, including haunting portrayals of poverty, alcoholism, and drug abuse, a description which we see playing out time and time again in the news to describe families who the American Dream has failed. If you want to gain a deeper understanding of how culture played a role in the 2016 election, this is the book for you.
2. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. Get it here!
“I don’t see color, I am color blind!” How many times have you heard that sentence before? Heck, have you ever made that statement? I am the first to admit that as a cisgender, white, woman I come from a position of privilege and that at one point I may have ever said similar phrases. The New Jim Crow put me in my place and made me admit that I was wrong. In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander examines that even though Jim Crow laws “ended” in the 1960s, it never really ended, just rebranded. Through the war on drugs and targeting of communities of color, Jim Crow laws now exist through the mass incarceration of people of color. The United States has the highest prison population of any country in the world, and a disproportionate number of those who have been locked up are people of color. To learn more about the prison industrial complex and the intersection with race, read The New Jim Crow today.
3. The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States by Jeffery Lewis. Get it here!
The 2020 Commission Report is a speculative novel which outlines an investigative report into a nuclear attack in 2020 nuclear attack against the United States by North Korea. Don’t be fooled by the title ‘speculative novel’ though. Lewis is one of the leading experts on North Korea, and uses real historical events to outline a path of how this nuclear attack comes to be. The personality-driven leadership styles of Trump and Kim Jong-Un are front and center in this novel, taking into account how our current diplomatic policy is putting us on a path towards failure.
Lewis’ credentials for writing this book are no joke. Lewis is a regular contributor to Foreign Policy, previously worked for the Department of Defense, and is the former director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation and is the former executive director of the Managing the Atom Project at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School.
As Lewis said in a recent interview with Verge, “A friend asked me what did I think the chances of this scenario actually happening were, and I think he said something like “10 percent?” I said something like 1 percent, but that’s still a hundred times higher than it should be. I think that the good news is that no one wants to use nuclear weapons. Everyone wants to resolve this problem. The bad news is, the parties are still really far apart. I don’t think there’s any chance North Korea is going to give up their weapons, and I just don’t know how the Trump administration is going to react when that finally becomes be clear.
There’s a way forward. It just requires us to be a little more courageous than we’ve been in the past and make some different choices. But that kind of change usually doesn’t happen, and it’s much more common to just muddle through. But the good news is, at least so far, we always have.”
There is no doubt that the escalating crisis diplomatic relations with North Korea will impact our generation. To gain a deeper understanding of the types of communication and diplomatic errors that could lead to a nuclear crisis with North Korea, be sure to read the 2020 Commission Report.
4. The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan. Get it here!
The oldest book on this list, The Lemon Tree, was initially published in 2007, and tells the story of a single home in former Palestine through the eyes of the current Israeli resident and a Palestinian refugee and former resident of the home. Tolan artfully brings a geopolitical crisis down to a person-to-person level in telling the story of two individuals who tried to form a friendship across the political divide. Dalia, a child of Holocaust Survivors, was born in a house in Israeli with a lemon tree out in the front yard. Bashir is a Palestinian was forced out of that home as a child to make way for the incoming Jewish population. What happens when these two meet face to face? Tolan tells the story of Dalia and Bashir and their shared history through multiple interviews and letters, and adding a face to the Israeli Palestinian crisis. If you are at all interested in foreign affairs, this book is for you.
5. Run for Something: A Real-Talk Guide to Fixing the System Yourself by Amanda Litman. Get it here!
So what now? You have have registered to vote in the election, you call your elected officials on a regular basis, now what do you do? Don’t just march, run for something. In Run for Something, Amanda Litman, email marketing director for the Clinton campaign and founder of Run For Something, breaks down everything you need to do to start your political campaign (from your local city council to Congressional races). From your marketing strategy to how to fundraise, this book has you covered. If you are ready to take the new step and consider running for local office, this is the book for you!
Narrowing this list down to 5 was difficult (trust me, I have another 7 up my sleeve) but this is a great place to get you started before the election. What books would you recommend reading?
Note: Adulting 201 is part of the Amazon Affiliate Program and will receive a commission should you purpose a book for the aforementioned links. Have no fear, each of these books is spectacular and I would recommend them even without the potential of commission.