The most recommended books on pacifism

I greatly admire Mohandas Gandhi and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., so I was intrigued when I heard about this book that looked at the common threads between two amazing historical figures who shared a goal of social reform. Being South Asian, I am very familiar with Mohandas Gandhi, and after moving to the United States, I learned a lot about the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and this book revealed what led these two men down the path of peace. Even today, it saddens me that both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. met their end to life by assassinations. I have only recently added this book to my classroom library, but anticipate it will be a popular choice among my students.

Jeannette Rankin is so well known for being the first woman elected to the US Congress, and for voting against American entry into both world wars, that her vital role in achieving women’s suffrage goes unappreciated. In this full biography, Giles engagingly recounts her tireless work across the nation as a suffrage campaigner, as well as her introduction, as a member of the House of Representatives, of the Susan B. Anthony amendment that would guarantee women the vote. There are many biographies of Rankin—this one is especially balanced and lively.

Daniel Berrigan was the first U.S. priest to be arrested for civil disobedience against war, and with his brother, achieved global fame for the 1968 Catonsville Nine protest against the Vietnam war and the 1980 Plowshares action against nuclear weapons. An award-winning poet, author of fifty books, Nobel peace prize nominee and priest, Daniel Berrigan changed the history of the church and called U.S. Christians to nonviolent resistance to the culture of violence and war and to pursue a new culture of justice, peace, and nonviolence. This is by far the best biography of Dan and is filled with great photos. I was one of Dan’s closest friends and remain his literary executor, so I can’t recommend this highly enough. Totally inspiring. 

Reading a novel in letters feels like snooping into someone's private thoughts, and that's exactly how I felt as I read Until Tomorrow, Mr. Marsworth. Reenie, age 11, writes letters that highlight the conflict between those who supported the Vietnam War and those who opposed it. Her letters ultimately reveal the situation faced by her family and by Mr. Marsworth. They are funny and heartfelt. History and family drama mix together in Reenie's letters and Mr. Marsworth's occasional response. O'Connor does a fabulous job of presenting controversial history in an engaging way. 

Are you a fan of Galaxy Quest, Futurama, or The Orville? Then this is the series for you.

There are scant few science fiction stories that have caused me to laugh out loud, but Paul Regnier’s Space Drifters did. Often. All three Space Drifters books are witty, action-packed, and fun. The main character, Captain Glint Starcrost, is perpetually broke, with a less-than-adequate starship and a bounty on his head. To make matters worse, he has a passive-aggressive ship computer, a pacifist alien “warrior,” and a time-traveling teen as his crew. Of course, there’s an unattainable love interest in the mix, along with a quest or two. Space Drifters is enjoyable and unique. 

Gangsters of Capitalism covers a part of US history that is often deliberately overlooked by Americans, because it clashes with our national myths about ourselves. Katz follows US imperial history from the very end of the 19th century through to the middle of the 20th century, by following the life and career of Smedley Butler, a man who served in the marines for so much of this history. Gangster of Capitalism is in the top five of my favorite books that I have ever read. Katz’s ability to weave a personal biography with sweeping history and how that history still affects us all in the present is superb. 

Ms. Kollwitz is one of the most famous expressionistic German artists and was the first female to teach in a university setting. She was a pacifist, champion of the poor, a politically-active socialist. Under the Nazi regime, her work was labeled “Degenerate.”  After learning about Ms. Kollwitz, I wrote a play about her entitled Censored.

This is sometimes heavy slogging, and irritating for the absence of her personal spiritual stories, but it remains a seminal work. Her lifelong quest was a source of private angst, provoking her to research and write novels, poems, and this psychological exploration of how the mystic fits into both worlds with joy. It includes a valuable appendix of mystics over centuries.

Now this isn’t in the zombie genre but it has that sense of being overwhelmed by numbers of nameless foes that seems very much a central tenet of the modern zombie genre. It has the outpost of an empty island that put our narrator (a pacifist) in the position of having to kill again and again. So often the zombies are faceless hordes – perhaps that is the fear they encapsulate but here, in what feels like the setting of a late-night movie I used to watch as a kid, here the narrator is tested again and again. A fantastic novel that defies categories. 

If you’ve browsed my list this far, maybe you’re curious enough to peek into Mennonite theology, which truly is upside-down from the world we live in. Even though I’d been Mennonite all my life, this book, which I read decades ago, explained what radical Christian discipleship meant in a way I’d never fully understood. All those things that make the theology challenging—choosing pacifism, taking care of the least in society, living humbly instead of seeking power, turning the other cheek, forgiving when it’s easier to seek revenge—are also what make it transformative. If only living it were that easy.