We're often asked about what we're reading or whether we can recommend books on democratic renewal, civic engagement or the design of public services. You asked. We listened and we promise to keep updating the list.


Coming to Public Judgment: Making Democracy Work in a Complex World
Daniel Yankelovich

With insight gained from over thirty years of research into how public opinion is formed, Yankelovich focuses on an issue of rising concern to us all: the American public’s eroding ability to influence its own future.


Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life
Theda Skocpol

What will happen to U.S democracy if participatory groups and social movements wither, while civic involvement becomes one more occupation rather than every citizen’s right and duty? Theda Skocpol shows that this decline in public involvement has not always been the case in this country- and how, by understanding the causes of this change, we might reverse it.


Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age
Benjamin Barber

It has been said that an excess of democracy can undo liberal institutions. Benjamin Barber flips the argument by saying that it is an excess of liberalism has undone our democratic institutions. For what little democracy we have had in the West, it has been repeatedly compromised by liberal institutions and their underlying philosophies.

Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy
John Dunn

John Dunn describes how government by the people began and what it has become. He blends history and ideas, bringing alive contemporary arguments for and against democracy, particularly in the context of the American and French revolutions.


The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy
James S. Fishkin

James Fishkin evaluates modern democratic practices, explains how the voice of the people has been muted in the past, and joins this with a review of ideas and experiments- including Fishkin's idea for a National Issues Convention to legitimately rediscover the people's voice.

False Necessity: Anti- Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy
Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Unger’s work is an effort to understand why contemporary societies are organized as they are, and to imagine how we can reform them to empower humanity- all of humanity. For those of us who live in a restless peace, after the tumult and the extremes of the twentieth century, the question remains: how can we make ourselves greater?

On Political Equality
Robert A. Dahl

Dahl explores the importance of equality as a "fundamental premise of democracy.” Believing that “its meaning and its relation to democracy, and to the distribution of resources that a citizen can use to influence public decisions” are not well understood. Yet regardless of the impossibility of achieving complete political equality, Dahl maintains that democracy and political equality are among the “most profound changes in human history.”


Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege and Success
Art Kleiner

Art Kleiner has uncovered a central truth about the way organizations work. His concept of the Core Group clarifies one key reason why rational people often act in seemingly irrational ways within the confines of an institution.


Plasticity into Power: Comparative- Historical Studies on the
Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success
Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Plasticity into Power works out, through historical examples, a major explanatory theme of Politics- the relation between the flexibility of social practices and institutions, and the development of our collective capacity to produce or to destroy. Although some of these more plastic social arrangements threaten us with oppression, others enlarge our freedom.


The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter than the Few and how Collective Wisdom shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations
James Surowiecki

Going against conventional wisdom, Surowiecki suggests that groups or crowds of people “do not need to be dominated by exceptionally intelligent people in order to be smart.” Going through a series of different groups, he maintains that “if you put together a big enough and diverse enough group of people and ask them to makes decisions affecting matters of general interest, that group’s decisions will, over time, be intellectually superior to the isolated individual, no matter how smart or well- informed he is.”


Modern Social Imaginaries
Charles Taylor

Retelling the history of Western modernity, Taylor traces the
development of a distinct social imaginary. Animated by the idea of a moral order based on the mutual benefit of equal participants, the Western social imaginary is characterized by three key cultural forms: the economy, the public sphere and self- governance.


Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations
John S. Dryzek

Dryzek’s work examines the deliberative turn in democratic theory, which argued that the essence of democratic legitimacy is to be found in authentic deliberations on the part of those affected by a collective decision. Drawing a distinction between liberal constitutionalist deliberative democracy and discursive democracy, the author criticizes the form and advocates the latter.


Politics and Passion: Toward a More Egalitarian Liberalism
Michael Walzer

While egalitarian in theory, liberalism often fails to promote equality in practice. Walzer’s work analyzes and critiques liberalism, demonstrating the disparity between theory and reality. Given these difficulties, Walzer provides ways in which the theory could be revised in order to accommodate claims for equality.


The Public Participation Handbook: Making Better Decisions through Citizen Involvement
James L. Creighton

James L. Creighton offers a practical guide to designing and facilitating public participation in environmental and public policy decision making. Written for government officials, public and community leaders and professional facilitators, the Public Participation Handbook is a toolkit for designing a participation process, selecting techniques to encourage participation, facilitating successful public meetings, working with the media and evaluating the program.


Participation: The New Tyranny?
Bill Cooke and Uma Kothari, eds.

This book is about participatory development’s potential for tyranny, showing how it can lead to the unjust and illegitimate exercise of power. It is the first book- length treatment to address the gulf between the almost universally fashionable rhetoric of participation, which promises empowerment and appropriate development on the one hand, and what actually happens when consultants and activists promote and practice participatory development, on the other.


Participation from Tyranny to Transformation?: Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development
Samuel Hickey and Giles Mohan, eds.

Participation has established itself as a significant approach to project implementation, policy-making and governance in developing and developed countries alike. Recently, however, it has become fashionable to dismiss participation as more rhetoric than substance. Critics suggest that it is subject to manipulation by agencies and social change agents intent simply on pursuing their own agendas under cover of community consent. In this important new book, development and other social policy scholars and practitioners seek to rebut this simplistic conclusion while addressing the problems of power and politics which have beset some approaches to participation.

The Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the 21st Century
John Gastil and Peter Levine

The Deliberative Democracy Handbook combines rich case material from many cities and types of institutional settings with careful reflection on core principles. It generates hope for a renewed democracy, tempered with critical scholarship and political realism. Most importantly, this handbook opens a spacious window on the innovative capacities of citizens in the U.S (and around the world) and shows how the varied practices of deliberative democracy are part of a larger civic renewal movement.


Respect in a World of Inequality
Richard Sennett

Sennett’s work addresses both the growing instances of need and social responsibility within the context of inequality. With each individual engaging in flexible social relationships, we are all troubled by issues of respect. Reflecting upon three factors which undermine mutual respect- unequal ability, adult dependency and degrading forms of compassion, Sennett brings forth a welfare system founded on respect for those in need. Rather than suggesting a society free from inequality, he emphasises one in which the best in each of its citizens is fostered and ties between individuals are encouraged.


The Concept of Representation
Hanna Fenichel Pitkin

The Concept of Representation is a concise and perceptive analysis of the various concepts of representation in European and American political theory. It is an indispensable guide to the questions that ought to be asked whenever anyone says that a system is representative. 

How Buildings Learn: What Happens After they’re Built
Stewart Brand

Buildings have often been studies whole in space, but never before have they been studied whole in time. How Buildings Learn is a masterful new synthesis proposing that buildings adapt best when constantly refined and reshaped by their occupants, and that architects can mature from being artists of space to becoming artists of time. More than any other human artifacts, buildings improve with time- if they’re allowed to. How Buildings Learn shows how to work with time rather than against it.


War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
Chris Hedges

Drawing on his own experiences and on the literature of combat from Homer to Michael Herr, Chris Hedges show how war seduces not just those on the front lines but entire societies, corrupting politics, destroying culture, and perverting basic human desires. Mixing hard-nosed realism with profound moral and philosophical insight, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is a work of terrible power and redemptive clarity whose truths have never been more necessary.


Philosophy and Social Hope
Richard Rorty

In this collection, Richard Rorty brings together a wide range of
philosophical, political and cultural writings, many of them seeing publication in book form for the first time. He explains in a fascinating memoir how he began to move away from Plato towards James and Dewey, to establish his own version of pragmatism. What matters, he suggests, is not whether our ideas correspond to some fundamental reality but whether they help us carry out practical tasks and create a fairer and more democratic society.


A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction
Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein with Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl- King and Shlomo Angel

A Pattern Language is the second in a series of books which
describe an entirely new attitude to architecture and planning. The books are intended to provide a complete working alternative to our present ideas about architecture, building and planning. This handbook aims to present a language which allows people to express themselves within their own communities and homes and thus to communicate better with each other.


Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank
Robert W. Fuller

Somebodies and Nobodies is a shrewd and compelling look at the crucial but usually unperceived role of rank in all our lives. How easily we put down those we see as subordinate in title or wealth or origin; how silently we cringe at another’s assumption of superiority. The abuses of rank and the denial of equal dignity to others corrupts relations between nations, and between the governors and the governed in a democracy. Robert Fuller is a realist, not an advocate of political correctness. He makes us understand that equal dignity, whatever one’s place in society or the world, is key to peace and social order.


Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design
Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller

Lupton and Miller set out to identify the intersection of contemporary critical theory and design as a kind of elaborated writing, thoroughly embedded in culture. While the subjects of their analysis varies widely- from isotypes, punctuation, numerals and experimental letterforms to stock photography, questions of high/low design and subliminal advertising- their method remains consistent. The authors are quite consciously applying recent literary theory to problems of visual culture in much the same way Paul Rand rigorously applied the philosophy of Hegel, Dewey and Whitehead to problems of modernist graphic design.


Reflections of a Siamese Twin: Canada at the End of the Twentieth
Century
John Ralston Saul

Attempting to expand upon the topics of culture, history and identity, John Ralston Saul’s work describes Canada as a complex and flexible state. He argues that Canada’s identity is composed of the “triangular reality” or the three nations that compose the country- Francophones, Anglophones and the First Nations. By doing so he attempts to uncover Canada’s distinguishing features and thus the core of its elusive identity.


The Parliament of Canada
C.E.S Franks

C.E.S Franks explores the nature of Canada’s parliamentary system and the roots of current dissatisfaction with its institutions. He compares the demands made on MPs with their essentially amateur abilities to govern. He relates the institution of Parliament to broader questions about political parties in general and considers the relationship of Parliament to the executive branch in policy- making and accountability.


The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Jane Jacobs

The research apparatus is not pretentious-it is the eye and the heart- but it has given us a magnificent study of what gives life and sprit to the city. It is an antithesis we very much need, for the elements Jane Jacobs perceives are precisely the elements we seem bent on eliminating in conventional redevelopment


The Art of the State III: Belonging? Diversity, Recognition and Shared Citizenship in Canada
Keith Banting, Thomas J. Courchene and F. Leslie Seidle, eds.

Leading scholars from Canada, Europe and the United States explore two broad policy agendas. First, the multicultural agenda  focuses on recognizing cultural differences, helping minorities express their distinct identities and practices, and building more inclusive conceptions of citizenship. Second is the integration agenda which seeks to bring minorities into the mainstream, strengthen the sense of mutual support and solidarity, and reinforce the bonds of a common community.


Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Malcolm Gladwell

Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid
storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious"- a 24/7 mental valet - that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea.


In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World
John Thackara

In the Bubble is about a world based less on 'stuff' and more on people. Thackara describes a transformation that is taking place now - not in a remote science-fiction future nor within illusory “schlock of the new”. It is about radical innovation already emerging in daily life and about regaining respect for what people can do and that technology cannot. In the Bubble describes services designed to help people carry out daily activities in new ways, many of which involve technologies ranging from body implants to wide-bodied jets. But objects and systems play only a supporting role in a people-centered world and are only the means to more human ends.


Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy
Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, eds.

For the more than 100 writers, artists and philosophers assembled in this groundbreaking editorial and curatorial project, politics is not just a profession, sphere, or system. It is, above all, a concern for things. Though the very word “republic” is infused with “things”- things made public- it is there same things that are always forgotten. Through more than 900 illustrations and over 100 essays, this collection searches for democracy beyond the official sphere of professional politics, and explores the myriad spaces of public assembly too often left out of a narrowly defined discourse.

Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich
Kevin Phillips

Phillips illuminates the dangerous politics that go with excessive concentration of wealth. Profiling wealthy 19th century Americans from Astor to Carnegie and Rockefeller, to contemporary wealth holders, Phillips provides fascinating details about the peculiarly American ways of becoming and staying a multimillionaire. He exposes the subtle corruption spawned by a money culture and financial power, evident in economic philosophy, tax favouritism, and selective bailouts in the name of free enterprise, economic stimulus, and national security.


Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Like as Play and Possibility
James P. Carse

Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life. They are zero-sum games we play in business and politics, in the bedroom and on the battlefield- games with winners and losers, a beginning and an end. Infinite games are the more mysterious and ultimately more rewarding. Unscripted and unpredictable, they are the sources of true freedom. James Carse explores what these games mean, and what hey can mean to you. He offers stunning new insights into the nature of property and power, of culture and community, of sexuality and self-discovery.


What Should the Left Propose?
Roberto Mangabeira Unger

What Should The Left Propose? is a manifesto that engages a vital question of our time: where do we go from here? Given that the major ideological proposals of the past two hundred years fail to address today's problems, the question is as salient as has ever been. Confronting the major debates in the world today - about national alternatives and alternative globalizations - Unger shows that there is a set of national and global alternatives that we can begin to develop with the materials at hand, opportunities available to us only if we learn to recognize them. These alternatives would, over time, vastly enhance our practical capabilities and affirm the central principle of democracy: the constructive genius of ordinary men and women. 

Random Selection in Politics
Lyn Carson and Brian Martin

Carson and Martin provide the first accessible and comprehensive
overview of "random selection" as a possible process for transforming our modern political systems. Building on the theoretical work of the likes of John Burnheim and Fred Emery and drawing from their own work with social action groups, they outline a set of methods that go beyond the mere tapping of community opinion to reveal not only preferences but a more active role in creating the community. Random selection, as they show, has been used in community participation both in short-term decision making and long-term planning. More broadly, random selection can be a powerful tool in the development of local, federal, and international policy.


Designing Deliberative Democracy: The British Columbia Citizens’
Assembly
Mark E. Warren and Hilary Pearse, eds.

Is it possible to advance democracy by empowering ordinary citizens to make key decisions about the design of political institutions and policies? In 2004, the government of British Columbia embarked on a bold democratic experiment: it created an assembly of 160 near- randomly selected citizens to assess and redesign the province’s electoral system. The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly represents the first time a citizen body has had the power to reform fundamental political institutions. It was an innovative gamble that has been replicated elsewhere in Canada and the Netherlands, and is gaining increasing attention in Europe as a democratic alternative for constitution-making and constitutional reform.


Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism
Michael Adams

Michael Adams argues that Canadians retain their
fundamental openness to people from other cultures despite concerns about “ethnic enclaves” and other supposed signs of social fracture. Featuring data from the country’s first-ever poll of Muslim Canadians, getting behind the headlines of stories about ethnic strife in Quebec, and querying Canadians on their views about one another, Adams depicts a country that is still optimistic, tolerant, and adaptable. Less intent on proving the heroic superiority of their own values and ideologies, Canadians are focusing on the more mundane task of helping people of all kinds get along both materially and socially.