The best, most inspirational books about nonviolent leaders

We all know the Gandhi in sandals and white khadi robes, but how did Gandhi become Gandhi? Guha narrates the remarkable transformation of Gandhi from a timid, London-trained lawyer into a bold, inventive activist advocating for the rights of the Indian immigrant community in South Africa. This engaging, meticulously researched book describes the emergence of Gandhi’s intertwined philosophy and politics, which together reintroduced nonviolence as a potent force to the tumultuous twentieth century.

Alice Paul is nearly as obscure as Gandhi is famous, but not because she deserves to be. Paul led the American suffrage movement during its final decade, from 1910 to 1919, when the nineteenth amendment was finally passed. Claiming Power is the best biography out there about the underappreciated Paul.  Zahniser and Fry detail the life of this indefatigable activist, who changed the suffrage movement from an often “ladylike,” deferential campaign to an unapologetically confrontational crusade. My own book emerged from a desire to tell Paul’s story as an example of nonviolent activism at work, because she is rarely understood in this context.  But make no mistake about it, Paul was a nonviolent leader of the first order.   

There is no shortage of fine books out there about Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement. Branch’s book, however, does the best job of situating King’s activism at the center of the larger story of the entire United States during this time. Among much else, Branch’s sprawling, riveting narrative (this 1000+ page volume is merely the first in a series of three) helps us see how a nonviolent movement influences as it responds to traditional, institutional sites of power. A truly illuminating book.

Because of the enormous odds stacked against each movement of this sort, the story of every nonviolent leader has an unlikely element to it. But Vaclav Havel’s biography may be the most unlikely of all. A playwright, an intellectual, and, in his own words, a “bundle of nerves,” Havel nevertheless found himself leader of Czechoslovakia’s astonishing nonviolent Velvet Revolution in 1989, and soon after became the country’s first president following the fall of communism. A very human embodiment of humanist conviction, Havel’s life is one to study.

Long Walk to Freedom is the only book on my list written by its subject, and for this reason it may well be the most powerful. Mandela’s story—in broadest outlines—is well-known: activist, freedom fighter, prisoner, and, of course, leader of post-apartheid South Africa. But reading Mandela’s autobiography will change how you understand this man. Indeed, you will be transformed as you follow him through the radically different stages of his life, as he evolves from a violent rebel to a nonviolent visionary capable of ending apartheid without a bloody civil war, as he describes how the impossible becomes possible.