Here are 100 books that Hope in the Dark fans have personally recommended if you like
Hope in the Dark.
Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I’ve sat in many grief circles and listened to fellow grievers share their pain at being abandoned or misunderstood by their friends and families as they grieve. Often we suffer the secondary loss of community because our culture has not taught us how to grieve or how to be a friend to those in grief. My wife and I found some invaluable tools that helped us communicate our needs to our community, and keep them close on our grief journey. One of those tools is grief books. I’ve read dozens of them, and while everyone responds to grief books differently, I think these five books are the very best.
Devine does a wonderful job of validating our feelings and our needs as we grieve.
It is filled with many wonderful pieces of wisdom about grief. The most helpful insight she offered me was the distinction she drew between the healthy pain of grief versus the unnecessary and unhelpful suffering that so often accompanies grief.
She provides practical advice on how to be kind to ourselves as we grieve. We can’t “fix” our grief and loss, but we can be kind to ourselves on this difficult journey.
As seen in THE NEW YORK TIMES * READER'S DIGEST * SPIRITUALITY & HEALTH * HUFFPOST
Featured on NPR's RADIO TIMES and WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO
When a painful loss or life-shattering event upends your world, here is the first thing to know: there is nothing wrong with grief. "Grief is simply love in its most wild and painful form," says Megan Devine. "It is a natural and sane response to loss."
So, why does our culture treat grief like a disease to be cured as quickly as possible?
In It's OK That You're Not OK, Megan Devine offers a profound…
There is a dearth of books that span the emotional journey into motherhood. An old adage directs authors to write the book they would like to read, so I kept that in mind as I began the journey myself. Throughout my pregnancy and postpartum experience, I was often surprised by perfectly ordinary occurrences that aren’t often discussed. There is a hush cast on anything that isn’t purely nurturing and romantic, which means that mothers who encounter unpleasantness are blindsided, and consider themselves aberrations. I wrote my book as honestly as possible to normalize the normal and to offer myself as a compatriot to those mothers.
This book delves into the science of pregnancy, but through a feminist lens. Through extensive research, Garbes details just how the female body creates life, a sometimes grisly and often wonderous process, as well as pans across our culture, with all its pitfalls, to explain just why women deserve better support through medical care and social nets.
A candid, feminist, and personal deep dive into the science and culture of pregnancy and motherhood
Like most first-time mothers, Angela Garbes was filled with questions when she became pregnant. What exactly is a placenta and how does it function? How does a body go into labor? Why is breast best? Is wine totally off-limits? But as she soon discovered, it’s not easy to find satisfying answers. Your obstetrician will cautiously quote statistics; online sources will scare you with conflicting and often inaccurate data; and even the most trusted books will offer information with a heavy dose of judgment. To…
I’ve been a manager and leader in social justice nonprofits and campaigns for almost 15 years. A lot of my work has been in fast-paced environments with high stakes and few resources. Consequently, I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to lead effectively under less-than-ideal conditions—whether that’s because of a tough political climate, financial constraints, or supporting staff through personal crises. I know from experience that social justice leaders and managers are often called to show up as our best selves so that we can support our teams to do their best work. In order to do this, we need to build our internal reserves to lead effectively.
Emergent Strategy draws lessons from both the natural world and science fiction (inspired by Octavia Butler’s work) to provide guidance and wisdom for organizing and movement work.
adrienne maree brown offers a smorgasbord of principles, concepts, quotes, and stories to support organizers and leaders to solve complex problems, instigate social change, and create lasting impact. This book is a great source of inspiration for managers and leaders feeling stuck in the face of great uncertainty.
In the tradition of Octavia Butler, radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want.
Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This…
I’m a librarian, writer, and proponent of the death positive movement. I’ve found some people assume that being death positive means a certain callousness. For me the opposite is true: I’m an anxious ball of feelings both for myself and towards others, and the death positive mindset helps me cope better with life’s curveballs. I can say with a degree of certainty that we’ve all been pitched some doozies lately, so I wanted to offer up some books that nourish in times of darkness without turning away in denial.
What I love about Mirk’s book is the physically productive response to anxiety, the unselfconscious approach to creating physical art and words, and how the physical creation is so personal yet so universal. The dedication of creating a zine a day is monkish in its attention and yet also achievable in a way that is inspiring. Make art for your own sake, because it’s good for you even if it’s not “good”. Use it to get to know and love yourself better.
I’ve researched and taught on contemporary social problems for over a decade. Much of this work focused on violence and, especially, torture. Not surprisingly, it often left me overwhelmed about the human condition and about the possibility of creating a better world. The students I taught often felt similarly. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when hope seemed in short supply, I began rethinking how I talk about, teach about, and study politics, problems, and the possibilities of change. As an antidote to despair, helplessness, and denial, hope became a defining feature of my work on violence and now, as I’ve pivoted toward studying the environment, climate change.
Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s book is my instruction manual for living with wonder and consideration for the world beyond our doors and phones.
I found myself enthralled by its lessons in transformation, as simple as many of them are. Learn the names of other species and listen to them. Walk barefoot. Wander aimlessly. Rooted as metaphor and reality, remained with me as a way of beginning to heal the damage caused by climate change, environmental degradation, and the attention economy.
In Rooted, cutting-edge science supports a truth that poets, artists, mystics, and earth-based cultures across the world have proclaimed over millennia: life on this planet is radically interconnected. Our bodies, thoughts, minds, and spirits are affected by the whole of nature, and they affect this whole in return. In this time of crisis, how can we best live upon our imperilled, beloved earth?
Award-winning writer Lyanda Lynn Haupt's highly personal new book is a brilliant invitation to live with the earth in both simple and profound ways-from walking barefoot in the woods and reimagining our relationship with animals…
I’ve researched and taught on contemporary social problems for over a decade. Much of this work focused on violence and, especially, torture. Not surprisingly, it often left me overwhelmed about the human condition and about the possibility of creating a better world. The students I taught often felt similarly. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when hope seemed in short supply, I began rethinking how I talk about, teach about, and study politics, problems, and the possibilities of change. As an antidote to despair, helplessness, and denial, hope became a defining feature of my work on violence and now, as I’ve pivoted toward studying the environment, climate change.
Is it possible to feel hopeful in the face of global climate change? I’ve found this especially difficult. Bad news about the environment seems unending; emotions like eco-anxiety and climate grief seem too hard to shake. But Eric Holthaus’ The Future Earth showed me that hope is still possible.
By describing the type of lives we might live and the sort of world we might build to mitigate climate change, Holthaus offered me a vision to work toward. By offering a model for having difficult conversations about global problems, his book also inspired me to try new ways of teaching and talking with others about issues like violence or climate change.
The first hopeful book about climate change, The Future Earth shows readers how to reverse the short- and long-term effects of climate change over the next three decades.
The basics of climate science are easy. We know it is entirely human-caused. Which means its solutions will be similarly human-led. In The Future Earth, leading climate change advocate and weather-related journalist Eric Holthaus ("the Rebel Nerd of Meteorology"-Rolling Stone) offers a radical vision of our future, specifically how to reverse the short- and long-term effects of climate change over the next three decades. Anchored by world-class reporting, interviews with futurists, climatologists,…
I’ve researched and taught on contemporary social problems for over a decade. Much of this work focused on violence and, especially, torture. Not surprisingly, it often left me overwhelmed about the human condition and about the possibility of creating a better world. The students I taught often felt similarly. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when hope seemed in short supply, I began rethinking how I talk about, teach about, and study politics, problems, and the possibilities of change. As an antidote to despair, helplessness, and denial, hope became a defining feature of my work on violence and now, as I’ve pivoted toward studying the environment, climate change.
It may be difficult to believe, but Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s memoir of detention and torture is one of the most life-affirming books I’ve encountered. I’ve read and reread Guantánamo Diary several times—and even taught the book to undergraduates in my seminar on torture.
Writing in a language he learned while detained by Americans at Guantánamo Bay, Slahi gives an honest account of human violence, including its causes and consequences. But he also sees through that violence to the possibility that our shared humanness persists despite our fears, hatred, and brutality.
An unprecedented international publishing event: the first and only diary written by a still-imprisoned Guantanamo detainee.
Since 2002, Mohamedou Slahi has been imprisoned at the detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In all these years, the United States has never charged him with a crime. Although he was ordered released by a federal judge, the U.S. government fought that decision, and there is no sign that the United States plans to let him go.
Three years into his captivity Slahi began a diary, recounting his life before he disappeared into U.S. custody and daily life as a detainee. His diary…
I’ve researched and taught on contemporary social problems for over a decade. Much of this work focused on violence and, especially, torture. Not surprisingly, it often left me overwhelmed about the human condition and about the possibility of creating a better world. The students I taught often felt similarly. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when hope seemed in short supply, I began rethinking how I talk about, teach about, and study politics, problems, and the possibilities of change. As an antidote to despair, helplessness, and denial, hope became a defining feature of my work on violence and now, as I’ve pivoted toward studying the environment, climate change.
Stanley Cohen’s States of Denial did not seem like a hopeful book to me, at least at first. After all, Cohen is documenting the many forms and causes of human rights crimes and denial. His stories of violence are difficult to read. But the more I’ve thought about Cohen’s classic of critical criminology, the more I’ve realized how necessary and hopeful it is.
Among his analysis of denial, Cohen interweaves stories of bystanders who acted—offering help to survivors of violence or intervening to expose violence. I’ve learned from Cohen that ordinary people can display extraordinary courage. But I’ve also learned that seemingly ordinary acts—letter writing or speaking truthfully about violence—can have extraordinary effects.
Blocking out, turning a blind eye, shutting off, not wanting to know, wearing blinkers, seeing what we want to see ... these are all expressions of 'denial'. Alcoholics who refuse to recognize their condition, people who brush aside suspicions of their partner's infidelity, the wife who doesn't notice that her husband is abusing their daughter - are supposedly 'in denial'. Governments deny their responsibility for atrocities, and plan them to achieve 'maximum deniability'. Truth Commissions try to overcome the suppression and denial of past horrors. Bystander nations deny their responsibility to intervene.
As a psychologist with environmental interests people often ask me about hope. It goes something like this: “Climate change is pushing us toward disaster! What is your source of hope?” I finally figured out that I only have one source of hope. It is that we, as people, are able to work together just well enough to keep it all afloat. There’s a lot involved in working together – learning to listen with compassion, run good meetings, empower everyone to give of their best, and rebuild trust when it starts to break down. I’ve been researching these topics in community settings for the past 15 years.
This was the book that introduced me to complex systems. Many people have become familiar with complex systems in recent years as we’ve been exposed to talk of feedback loops and probability through discussions on climate change. Little inputs can make a big difference and big inputs sometimes collapse under the weight of their own inertia. This book has one of those titles that work their way into your imagination – getting to maybe?
It does not suggest you set goals and work, head down, towards your personal mission. It suggests that you take a look around, gather with others, invite ideas based on people’s passions, and get started. It is all about experimenting and learning together. Then, maybe, something will good will happen. The book offers plenty of inspiring examples of significant social change as a result of genuine innovation and listening to many voices.
A practical, inspirational, revolutionary guide to social innovation
Many of us have a deep desire to make the world around us a better place. But often our good intentions are undermined by the fear that we are so insignificant in the big scheme of things that nothing we can do will actually help feed the world’s hungry, fix the damage of a Hurricane Katrina or even get a healthy lunch program up and running in the local school. We tend to think that great social change is the province of heroes – an intimidating view of reality that keeps ordinary…
The physical practice of yoga transformed my relationship to my body, but the philosophy of yoga changed my life. When I began to study the Sutras, my mind became calmer; I had a greater capacity to listen and be patient in my relationships, and my quality of life improved. As I studied philosophy more, my perspective shifted from lack and blame to abundance and self-awareness. Knowing there is more to yoga than just the physical practice, I find it important to honor the tradition the way it was intended: as a whole system for the mind, body, and spirit to reduce the suffering of all beings.
Michelle Cassandra Johnson knows yoga is both a personal practice to ease suffering and one that calls on us to lessen the suffering of others. She connects the philosophy to social justice so well, it’s as though she sat alongside the original scholars of the Sutras. Her book is packed with quiet wisdom, prompts, meditations, reflection, and so much heart. It’s both a workbook and a philosophy text, a resource, and an awakening. If you can study the book with her, do. She has many online offerings. Her presence is comforting, affirming, bold, and her book reflects these qualities.
THIS IS THE 2nd and LATEST EDITION OF SKILL IN ACTION. Transform your yoga practice into a force for creating social change with this concise, eloquent guide to social justice tools and skills.
Skill in Action asks you to explore the deeply transformational practice of yoga as a way to become an agent of social change and work toward a just world. Through yoga practices and philosophy, this book explores liberation for ourselves and others, while asking us to engage in our own agency--whether that manifests as activism, volunteer work, or changing our relationships with others and ourselves. To provide…
Interested in
hope,
the Berlin Wall,
and
politics?
11,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
hope,
the Berlin Wall,
and
politics.