Top 10 Summer Reads for Campaigners

In this blog, SMK Programme Support and Communications Officer Greta Mauch shares her top 10 book recommendations for campaigners.

In my postgraduate degree in Media, Campaigning, and Social Change, I had the privilege and opportunity to read a wide variety of books about the best ways to achieve change. Since joining SMK in April, I have also benefitted from so many great book recommendations from others working in the social change space through the E-Campaigners Forum. 

Here are my Top 10 books for campaigners

1. SMK’s Changemakers Toolkit Though technically not a book, this free campaign training course is a great resource! The Changemaker’s Toolkit is a product of SMK’s innovative social change analysis and years of collaborating with changemakers. It includes modules that are designed to help changemakers understand, map, and plan to create impactful change. Access it for free here.
2. Emotions and Social Movements by Helena Flam and Debra King. I think everyone in my programme cited this one in their dissertation. This necessary read shows “how emotions connect macro- and micro-politics” and “how emotions work in a social context.” This book gives a unique insight into an aspect of campaigning that most do not.
3. Common Cause: The Case for Working with our Cultural Values by Tom Crompton and/or The Common Cause Handbook by The Common Cause Foundation. Both of these seminal books share how campaigners can appeal to their audiences’ values and beliefs, not only to drive them to help their campaigns but also to prime the wider culture for social change.
4. How to Win Campaigns by Chris Rose. This book is “a practical guide for creating and running successful campaigns.” As a student this was one of my top useful reads. 
5. Changemakers: Radical Strategy for Social Movement Organising by Jane Holgate and John Page. This book “draw[s] from frontline experiences in trade unions, environmentalism, animal rights, and social justice movements [to explore] essential themes from leadership to the art of negotiation.”
6. Practical Radicals by Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce. This book offers seven proven-effective campaign strategies for the next generation of activists. Sunrise Movement co-founder and executive director Varshini Prakash said this book “helps us learn from the lineage of struggle we are part of and shows how we must innovate to meet today’s challenges.”
7. The Shoulders We Stand On: How Black and Brown people fought for change in the United Kingdom by Preeti Dhillon. Eastern Eye’s Nonfiction Book of The Year 2023, this book “tells the stories of ten remarkable movements, campaigns and organisations led by Black and Brown people across Britain from the sixties to the eighties.”
8. In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business by Charlan Nemeth. A truly unique read featured in a recent ECF email chain, this book explores examples of how expressing dissent has led to social change in the past.
9. Rules for Radicals by Saul David Alinsky. Written in the 1970s as an organisers’ manual, this book is described as “a Bible for campaigners” and lays out thirteen rules for achieving social change.  
10. Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis. No recommended reading list is complete without Angela Davis’s insights, and this book perfectly pulls together how all our struggles are interconnected.

I hope there’s at least one new read on this list that is useful for your campaigning and social change work. If you have any books or resources that we should know about, please email me at Greta.Mauch@smk.org.uk! Happy reading!