The world is fucked but nihilistic apathy isn’t super useful to me rn. So we’ll try radical active hope maybe? I want to read more nonfiction that has some academic weight to it, but inspires action.
I loved Braiding Sweetgrass. It made me reconsider assumptions about the world I live in. It was based in science and history and spiritual tradition. It had a collectivist bent to it. I loved all of that.
It doesn’t have to be about environmentalism.
I’m down for history and social science as well. Just has basis in some scholarship of some sort, instead of a self-help book full of some random guy’s opinions.
by Complete_Curve411
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Humankind by Rutger Bregman
Gathering Moss, by the same author, is just as good or even better.
Factfulness by Hans Rosling
Here are a couple of my recommendations:
[**The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber & David Wengrow**](https://amzn.to/48NoYwl) A deeply researched, paradigm-shifting work that challenges the idea that hierarchy and inequality are inevitable. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology, and history, it reframes humanity’s past in a way that opens up real possibilities for different, more hopeful futures—very much in the spirit of *Braiding Sweetgrass*.
[**Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira**](https://amzn.to/4qfl6d4) An intellectually rigorous yet emotionally grounded book that asks how we move forward without denial or nihilism. Rooted in Indigenous scholarship, social theory, and ethics, it encourages collective responsibility and transformation without drifting into self-help platitudes.
I attached the links in the titles above to their Amazon pages for you to check them out. Enjoy!
The Book of Joy by Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama
What if We Git it Right by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
I’m really enjoying *[A Paradise Built in Hell](https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-paradise-built-in-hell-the-extraordinary-communities-that-arise-in-disaster-rebecca-solnit/07700670d272cfac?ean=9780143118077&next=t&utm_source=google&utm_medium=pmax&utm_campaign=16243454879&utm_content=&utm_term=%7Bsearchterm%7D&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=16235479093&gclid=Cj0KCQiA6Y7KBhCkARIsAOxhqtN8VbxUauXftlCZbQLW2zLFvxts2wFjF0KomS-flvqSA0iSSZRJcmcaAqDmEALw_wcB)*. It’s about how people respond to disasters by making tiny little utopias to support each other. Parts of it are infuriating, like how the military responded to the San Francisco earthquake, but it’s overall very hopeful about human nature and how great people can be.
The Comfort of Crows – Margaret Renkle