The Persuaders

A riveting insider account of how activists, politicians, educators, and citizens are working to change minds, bridge divisions, and save democracy from the bestselling author of Winners Take All.

It once seemed possible to build a political movement out of people with different ideas, different identities, and different ways of looking at the world. If somebody disagreed with you, you brought them on side, convincing them of your point of view. Politics was civil and optimistic. But in our modern polarized world of cancel culture and conspiracy theory, all that seems a distant memory; it feels like we've long abandoned to the past the art of persuasion.

And yet, as bestselling writer Anand Giridharadas finds, things are changing. Journeying into the heart of some of our most contentious and urgent political battles—from Black Lives Matter to the Trump resistance, from vaccine myths to QAnon—Giridharadas discovers a diverse group of dissenters who continue to struggle for consensus, who remain committed to the idea that to change the world, one must first change minds.

Combining gripping on-the-ground experience with the revelatory insights of activists, organisers, politicians, and educators, The Persuaders is the book for a time in need of mending. It is the story of a new kind of politics—one that is fierce in its pursuit of justice and earnest in its desire to improve people's lives, but also open, welcoming, and, above all else, persuasive.