The Persuaders: Winning Hearts and Minds in a Divided Age
The lifeblood of any free society is persuasion: changing other people’s minds to enable real change. But America is suffering a crisis of faith in persuasion that is putting its democracy and the planet itself at risk.
People increasingly write each other off instead of seeking to win each other over. Debates are framed in moralistic terms, with enemies battling the righteous. Movements for justice build barriers to entry, instead of on-ramps. Political parties focus on mobilising the faithful rather than wooing the sceptical. And leaders who seek to forge coalition are labelled sell-outs.
In The Persuaders author Anand Giridharadas takes us inside these movements and battles, seeking out the dissenters who continue to champion persuasion in an age of polarisation. We meet a co-founder of Black Lives Matter; a leader of the feminist resistance to Trumpism; white parents at a seminar on raising adopted children of colour; Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; a team of door knockers with an uncanny formula for changing minds on immigration; and an ex-cult member turned QAnon deprogrammer.
About Anand Giridharadas
Anand Giridharadas is the bestselling author of Winners Take All. He is a correspondent-at-large for Time and was a foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times. He has also written for The Atlantic, The New Republic, and The New Yorker.
Reviews
“Illuminating and entertaining . . . while the world seems to counsel despair, The Persuaders is animated by a sense of possibility”
The New York Times
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