I consulted hundreds of books and hundreds of articles in researching and writing the profiles of the 100 greatest Americans in this book. This bibliography includes books by and about these people. This list is provided as a starting point for readers who want to learn more about these fascinating individuals as well as the times in which they lived and the movements in which they participated. Some of them have not yet been the subject of a full-length biography or have not written an autobiography. In those cases, I have included books that offer some biographical information. I have also included biographical and documentary films about many of the individuals.
General References
Irving Bernstein. The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920–1933. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972.
———. Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933–1941. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971.
Mari Jo Buhle. Women and American Socialism, 1870–1920. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.
Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund. The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
Dorothy Sue Cobble. The Other Women’s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Ronald D. Cohen. Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940–1970. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002.
John D’Emilio. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Michael Denning. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. London: Verso, 1996.
Philip Dray. There Is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America. New York: Doubleday, 2010.
Mary L. Dudziak. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Sara Evans. Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left. New York: Vintage Books, 1980.
Eric Foner. The Story of American Freedom. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998.
Glenda Gilmore. Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919–1950. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.
Todd Gitlin. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: Bantam Books, 1987.
Robert Gottlieb. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement, rev. ed. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003.
Jonathan Hansen. The Lost Promise of Patriotism: Debating American Identity, 1890–1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin. America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Jonathan Katz. Gay American History, rev. ed. New York: Plume, 1992.
Michael Kazin. American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.
David M. Kennedy. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Diana Klebanow and Franklin L. Jonas. People’s Lawyers: Crusaders for Justice in American History. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003.
Nick Kotz. Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.
Lawrence Lader. Power on the Left: American Radical Movements Since 1949. New York: W. W. Norton, 1980.
Nelson Lichtenstein. The State of the Union: A Century of Labor in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Bradford Martin. The Other Eighties: A Secret History of America in the Age of Reagan. New York: Hill and Wang, 2011.
Michael McGerr. A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Dan McKanan. Prophetic Encounters: Religion and the American Radical Tradition. Boston: Beacon Press, 2011.
Aldon Morris. Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change. New York: Free Press, 1984.
William O’Neill. Everyone Was Brave: The Rise and Fall of Feminism in America. New York: HarperCollins, 1969.
James Patterson. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
William Preston Jr. Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903–1933. New York: Harper and Row, 1963.
Ruth Rosen. The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America. New York: Viking, 2000.
Harvey Sitkoff. A New Deal for Blacks. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Thomas Sugrue. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. New York: Random House, 2008.
Cecilia Tichi. Civic Passions: Seven Who Launched Progressive America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
Zaragosa Vargas. Labor Rights Are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
James Weinstein. The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912–1925. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.
Lawrence Wittner. Rebels Against War: The American Peace Movement, 1933–1983, rev. ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984.
Howard Zinn. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005.
Tom Johnson (1854–1911)
Melvin G. Holli. The American Mayor: The Best and the Worst Big-City Leaders. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.
Tom L. Johnson. My Story. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1911.
Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925)
David P. Thelen. Robert M. La Follette and the Insurgent Spirit. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976.
Eugene Debs (1855–1926)
Ray Ginger. The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1949.
Nick Salvatore. Eugene Debs: Citizen and Socialist. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982.
Louis Brandeis (1856–1941)
Louis Brandeis. The Curse of Bigness. New York: Viking Press, 1935.
———. Other People’s Money—And How the Bankers Use It. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1914.
Philippa Strum. Louis D. Brandeis: Justice for the People. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Melvin Urofsky. Louis D. Brandeis: A Life. New York: Pantheon Books, 2009.
Clarence Darrow (1857–1938)
Geoffrey Cowan. The People v. Clarence Darrow: The Bribery Trial of America’s Greatest Lawyer. New York: Times Books, 1993.
Clarence Darrow. Attorney for the Damned. Edited by Arthur Weinberg. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Originally published in 1957.
John A. Farrell. Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned. New York: Double day, 2011.
Andrew Kersten. Clarence Darrow: American Iconoclast. New York: Hill and Wang, 2011.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)
H. W. Brands. TR: The Last Romantic. New York: Basic Books, 1998.
Douglas Brinkley. The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.
James Chace. 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs—The Election That Changed the Country. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004.
Edmund Morris. Theodore Rex. New York: Modern Library, 2002.
Florence Kelley (1859–1932)
Dorothy Rose Blumberg. Florence Kelley: The Making of a Social Pioneer. New York: A. M. Kelley, 1966.
Josephine Goldmark. Impatient Crusader: Florence Kelly’s Life Story. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1953.
Kathryn Kish Sklar. Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women’s Political Culture, 1830–1900. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995.
Kathryn Kish Sklar and Beverly Wilson Palmer, eds. The Selected Letters of Florence Kelley, 1869–1931. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
John Dewey (1859–1952)
Jay Martin. The Education of John Dewey: A Biography. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
Alan Ryan. John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995.
Robert Westbrook. John Dewey and American Democracy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Victor Berger (1860–1929)
Sally Miller. Victor Berger and the Promise of Constructive Socialism, 1910–1920. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973.
David Shannon. The Socialist Party of America: A History. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967.
James Weinstein. The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912–1925. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
Cynthia J. Davis. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Biography. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2010.
Jane Addams (1860–1935)
Jane Addams. Twenty Years at Hull-House. New York: Macmillan, 1926.
Victoria Brown. The Education of Jane Addams. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
Jean Bethke Elshtain. Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: A Life. New York: Basic Books, 2002.
Louise W. Knight. Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
———. Jane Addams: Spirit in Action. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.
Peter Hartshorn. I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2011.
Justin Kaplan. Lincoln Steffens: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974.
Lincoln Steffens. The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931.
Hiram Johnson (1866–1945)
William Deverell and Tom Sitton, eds. California Progressivism Revisited. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
R. C. Lower. A Bloc of One: The Political Career of Hiram Johnson. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1993.
George E. Mowry. The California Progressives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951.
Spencer C. Olin Jr. California’s Prodigal Sons: Hiram Johnson and the Progressives, 1911–1917. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963)
David L. Lewis. W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919. New York: H. Holt, 1994.
———. W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963. New York: H. Holt, 2000.
William “Big Bill” Haywood (1869–1928)
Peter Carlson. Roughneck: The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984.
Melvyn Dubofsky. “Big Bill” Haywood. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1987.
William D. Haywood. Bill Haywood’s Book: The Autobiography of William D. Haywood. New York: International Publishers, 1929.
J. Anthony Lukas. Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.
Alice Hamilton (1869–1970)
Alice Hamilton. Exploring the Dangerous Trades: The Autobiography of Alice Hamilton, M.D. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England / North-eastern University Press, 1985. Originally published in 1943.
Barbara Sicherman. Alice Hamilton: A Life in Letters. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Originally published in 1984.
Cecilia Tichi. Civic Passions: Seven Who Launched Progressive America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
Richard Drinnon. Rebel in Paradise: A Biography of Emma Goldman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
Candace Falk. Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990.
Kate Sampsell-Willman. Lewis Hine as Social Critic. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009.
Robert F. Wagner Sr. (1877–1953)
J. Joseph Huthmacher. Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism. New York: Atheneum, 1968.
Upton Sinclair (1878–1968)
Anthony Arthur. Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair. New York: Random House, 2006.
Kevin Mattson. Upton Sinclair and the Other American Century. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2006.
Greg Mitchell. The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics. New York: Random House, 1993.
Film: “We Have a Plan.” Season 1, episode 4 of The Great Depression. Documentary. Produced by Lyn Goldfarb. 1993.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
Albert Einstein. Ideas and Opinions. New York: Modern Library, 1994. Originally published in 1954.
———. The World as I See It. New York: Citadel Press, 1991. Originally published in 1935.
Jim Green. Albert Einstein. New York: Ocean Press, 2003.
Walter Isaacson. Einstein: His Life and Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007.
Fred Jerome. The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret War Against the World’s Most Famous Scientist. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002.
Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor. Einstein on Race and Racism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006.
Margaret Sanger (1879–1966)
Ellen Chesler. Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.
Emily Taft Douglas. Margaret Sanger: Pioneer of the Future. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969.
Madeline Gray. Margaret Sanger: A Biography of the Champion of Birth Control. New York: R. Marek, 1979.
David M. Kennedy. Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970.
Film: Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story. Directed by Paul Shapiro. 1995.
Film: Margaret Sanger: A Public Nuisance. Documentary. Directed by Terese Svoboda and Steve Bull. 1992.
Saul Alinsky. John L. Lewis: An Unauthorized Biography. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1949.
Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine. John L. Lewis: A Biography. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.
Helen Keller (1880–1968)
John Davis. Helen Keller. New York: Ocean Press, 2003.
Dorothy Herrmann. Helen Keller: A Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Kim Nielsen. Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller. Boston: Beacon Press, 2009.
———. The Radical Lives of Helen Keller. New York: New York University Press, 2004.
Film: Shining Soul: Helen Keller’s Spiritual Life and Legacy. Documentary. Directed by Penny Price. 2006.
Frances Perkins (1880–1965)
Adam Cohen. Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America. New York: Penguin Press, 2009.
Kirstin Downey. The Woman Behind the New Deal: Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience. New York: Doubleday, 2009.
Richard Greenwald. The Triangle Fire, the Protocols of Peace, and Industrial Democracy in Progressive Era New York. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005.
Frances Perkins. The Roosevelt I Knew. New York: Viking Press, 1946.
David Von Drehle. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America. New York: Grove Press, 2003.
Film: Triangle: Remembering the Fire. Documentary. Directed by Daphne Pinkerson. 2011.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
H. W. Brands. Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. New York: Doubleday, 2009.
Adam Cohen. Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America. New York: Penguin Press, 2009.
Frank Freidel. Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny. Boston: Back Bay Books, 1990.
Rose Schneiderman (1882–1972)
Gary Endelman. Solidarity Forever: Rose Schneiderman and the Women’s Trade Union League. New York: Arno Press, 1982.
Annalise Orleck. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900–1965. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Rose Schneiderman. All for One. New York: P. S. Eriksson, 1967.
David Von Drehle. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America. New York: Grove Press, 2003.
Fiorello La Guardia (1882–1947)
Melvin G. Holli. The American Mayor: The Best and the Worst Big-City Leaders. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.
Thomas Kessner. Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York. New York: Penguin Books, 1989.
Arthur Mann. La Guardia: A Fighter Against His Times, 1882–1933. New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1959.
Howard Zinn. La Guardia in Congress. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1959.
Roger Baldwin (1884–1981)
Robert C. Cottrell. Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
Samuel Walker. In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
Blanche Wiesen Cook. Eleanor Roosevelt. 2 vols. New York: Penguin, 1993, 2000.
Eleanor Roosevelt. The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1961.
Norman Thomas (1884–1968)
W. A. Swanberg. Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist. New York: Scribner, 1976.
Norman Thomas. The Choice Before Us. New York: Macmillan, 1934.
A. J. Muste (1885–1967)
Nat Hentoff. Peace Agitator: The Story of A. J. Muste. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967.
Maurice Isserman. If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left. New York: Basic Books, 1987.
Jo Ann Robinson. Abraham Went Out: A Biography of A. J. Muste. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981.
Alice Stokes Paul (1885–1977)
Katherine Adams and Michael Keene. Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
Amy E. Butler. Two Paths to Equality: Alice Paul and Ethel M. Smith in the ERA Debate, 1921–1929. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.
Linda Ford. Iron-Jawed Angels: The Suffrage Militancy of the National Woman’s Party 1912–1920. New York: University Press of America, 1991.
Jo Freeman. We Will Be Heard: Women’s Struggles for Political Power in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008.
Christine Lunardini. From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, 1910–1928. New York: New York University Press, 1986.
Mary Walton, A Woman’s Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Sidney Hillman (1887–1946)
Steve Fraser. Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor. New York: Free Press, 1991.
Karen Pastorello. A Power Among Them: Bessie Abramowitz Hillman and the Making of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008.
Henry Wallace (1888–1965)
Adam Cohen. Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America. New York: Penguin Press, 2009.
John C. Culver and John Hyde. American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000.
A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979)
Jervis Anderson. A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.
Andrew E. Kersten. A. Philip Randolph: A Life in the Vanguard. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.
Film: A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom. Documentary. Directed by Dante James. 1996.
Film: 10,000 Black Men Named George. Directed by Robert Townsend. 2002.
Earl Warren (1891–1974)
Ed Cray. Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.
Richard Kluger. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality. New York: Vintage Books, 1977.
Jim Newton. Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made. New York: Riverhead Books, 2006.
Edward White. Earl Warren: A Public Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Floyd Olson (1891–1936)
George H. Mayer. Political Career of Floyd B. Olson. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987. Originally published in 1950.
Arthur M. Schlesinger. The Politics of Upheaval, 1935–1936: The Age of Roosevelt. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Originally published in 1960.
Richard Valelly. Radicalism in the States: The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the American Political Economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Robert Coles. Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987.
Dorothy Day. The Long Loneliness. Chicago: Saint Thomas More Press, 1993.
Jim Forest. Love Is the Measure: A Biography of Dorothy Day. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994.
William Miller. A Harsh and Dreadful Love—Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement. New York: Liveright, 1973.
———. Dorothy Day: A Biography. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982.
Mel Piehl. Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982.
Film: Dorothy Day: Don’t Call Me a Saint. Documentary. Directed by Claudia Larson. 2006.
Film: Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story. Directed by Michael Ray Rhodes. Paulist Pictures, 1996.
Paul Robeson (1898–1976)
Martin Duberman. Paul Robeson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
Philip Foner, ed. Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, and Interviews: A Centennial Celebration. New York: Citadel Press, 1982.
Paul Robeson. Here I Stand. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.
Film: Paul Robeson: Here I Stand. Documentary. Directed by St. Claire Bourne. PBS, 1999.
William O. Douglas (1898–1980)
William O. Douglas. The Court Years: 1939–1975. New York: Random House, 1980.
Ann Gilliam. Voices for the Earth. New York: Random House, 1982.
Bruce Allen Murphy. Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas. New York: Random House, 2003.
Lucas A. Powe Jr. The Warren Court and American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.
James Simon. Independent Journey: The Life of William O. Douglas. New York: Harper and Row, 1980.
Harry Bridges (1901–1990)
Stanley Kutler. The American Inquisition: Justice and Injustice in the Cold War. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982.
Charles Larrowe. Harry Bridges: The Rise and Fall of Radical Labor in the United States. New York: Lawrence Hill, 1972.
Frances Perkins. The Roosevelt I Knew. New York: Viking, 1946.
Film: Harry Bridges: A Man and His Union. Documentary. Directed by Berry Minott. 1992.
Langston Hughes. The Big Sea: Autobiography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940.
———. I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964.
Arnold Rampersad. The Life of Langston Hughes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Vito Marcantonio (1902–1954)
Gerald Meyer. Vito Marcantonio: Radical Politician, 1902–1954. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.
Annette T. Rubinstein, ed. I Vote My Conscience: Debates, Speeches, and Writings of Vito Marcantonio, 1935–1950. New York: Marcantonio Memorial Fund, 1956.
Alan L. Shaffer. Vito Marcantonio, Radical in Congress. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1966.
Virginia F. Durr (1903–1999)
Anne Colby and William Damon. Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral Commitment. New York: Free Press, 1992.
Virginia Durr. Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985.
Joan Marie Johnson. Southern Women at the Seven Sister Colleges. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008.
Patricia Sullivan, ed. Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr. Letters from the Civil Rights Years. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Donnie Williams. The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People Who Broke the Back of Jim Crow. With Wayne Greenhaw. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2005.
Ella Baker (1903–1986)
Clayborne Carson. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Joanne Grant. Ella Baker: Freedom Bound. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998.
Barbara Ransby. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Film: Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker. Documentary. Directed by Joanne Grant. 1981.
Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) (1904–1991)
Jonathan Cott. Pipers at the Gates of Dawn: The Wisdom of Children’s Literature. New York: Random House, 1981.
Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, and Jane Shattuc. Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.
Julia Mickenberg and Philip Nel, eds. Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature. New York: New York University Press, 2008.
Richard H. Minear. Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel. New York: New Press, 1999.
Judith and Neil Morgan. Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel: A Biography. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996.
Philip Nel. Dr. Seuss: American Icon. New York: Continuum, 2004.
Myles Horton (1905–1990)
Frank Adams. Unearthing Seeds of Fire: The Idea of Highlander. With Myles Horton. Winston-Salem, NC: J. F. Blair, 1975.
John Glen. Highlander: No Ordinary School. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996.
Myles Horton. The Long Haul: Autobiography of Myles Horton. With Herbert and Judith Kohl. New York: Doubleday, 1991.
———. The Myles Horton Reader: Education for Social Change. Edited by Dale Jacobs. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003.
Myles Horton and Paulo Freire. We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change by Paulo Freire and Myles Horton. Edited by Brenda Bell, John Gaventa, and John Peters. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
Howell Raines. My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977.
Eliot Wigginton, ed. Refuse to Stand Silently By: An Oral History of Grassroots Social Activism in America, 1921–1964. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Carey McWilliams (1905–1980)
Carey McWilliams. The Education of Carey McWilliams. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979.
———. North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1949.
Peter Richardson. American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
William J. Brennan Jr. (1906–1997)
E. Joshua Rosenkranz and Bernard Schwartz, eds. Reason and Passion: Justice Brennan’s Enduring Influence. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.
Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel. Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972)
Abraham Joshua Heschel. Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity. Edited by Susannah Heschel. New York: Noonday Press, 1996.
Edward K. Kaplan. Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940–1972. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
Martha Freeman, ed. Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, 1952–1964. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
Linda J. Lear, ed. Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.
———. Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. New York: Henry Holt, 1997.
Mark Hamilton Lytle. The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, “Silent Spring,” and the Rise of the Environmental Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Peter Matthiessen, ed. Courage for the Earth: Writers, Scientists, and Activists Celebrate the Life and Writing of Rachel Carson. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
Film: A Sense of Wonder. Documentary. Produced by Kaiulani Lee. Sense of Wonder Productions, 2010.
Walter Reuther (1907–1970)
Kevin Boyle. Organized Labor and American Politics, 1894–1994: The Labor-Liberal Alliance. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.
Nelson Lichtenstein. The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor. New York: Basic Books, 1995.
Film: Sit Down and Fight: Walter Reuther and the Rise of the Auto Workers Union. Documentary. Directed by Charlotte Zwerin. 1993.
Film: With Babies and Banners: Story of the Women’s Emergency Brigade. Documentary. Directed by Lorraine W. Gray and Lyn Goldfarb. 1978.
I. F. Stone (1907–1989)
D. D. Guttenplan. American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.
Myra MacPherson. All Governments Lie! The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone. New York: Scribner, 2006.
I. F. Stone. The Best of I. F. Stone. Edited by Karl Weber. New York: Public Affairs, 2006.
———. In Time of Torment, 1961–1967. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989.
———. Polemics and Prophecies, 1967–1970. New York: Vintage Books, 1972.
Film: I. F. Stone’s Weekly. Documentary. Directed by Jerry Bruck Jr. 1973.
Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993)
Rawn James Jr. Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010.
Richard Kluger. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975.
Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall: His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions, and Reminiscences. Edited by Mark V. Tushnet. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2001.
Mark Tushnet. Making Constitutional Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1961–1991. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Juan Williams. Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary. New York: Times Books, 1998.
Film: Thurgood. Directed by Michael Stevens. HBO. 2011.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973)
Robert Caro. Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
———. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
———. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.
Robert Dallek. Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
———. Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908–1960. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Doris Kearns Goodwin. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. New York: Harper and Row, 1976.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006)
John Kenneth Galbraith. The Affluent Society. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958.
———. Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975.
Richard Parker. John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Saul Alinsky (1909–1972)
Saul Alinsky. Reveille for Radicals. New York: Vintage Books, 1946.
———. Rules for Radicals. New York: Vintage Books, 1971.
Sanford D. Horwitt. Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky. His Life and Legacy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.
Nicholas Von Hoffman. Radical: A Portrait of Saul Alinsky. New York: Nation Books, 2010.
Film: The Democratic Promise: Saul Alinsky and His Legacy. Documentary. Directed by Bob Hercules and Bruce Orenstein. PBS. 1999.
Film: Encounter with Saul Alinsky: Parts I and II. Documentary. Directed by Peter Pearson. National Film Board of Canada. 1967.
Bayard Rustin (1912–1987)
Jervis Anderson. Bayard Rustin: Trouble I’ve Seen. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Raymond Arsenault. Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
John D’Emilio. Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Film: Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin. Documentary. Directed by Nancy D. Kates and Bennett Singer. 2003.
Harry Hay (1912–2002)
Harry Hay. Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of Its Founder. Edited by Will Roscoe. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.
Stuart Timmons. The Trouble with Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement. Boston: Alyson Publications, 1990.
Film: Hope Along the Wind. Documentary. Directed by Eric Slade. 2002.
Studs Terkel (1912–2008)
Studs Terkel. P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening. New York: New Press, 2008.
———. Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977.
———. Touch and Go: A Memoir. New York: New Press, 2008.
David Brower (1912–2000)
David Brower. Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
———. Work in Progress. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 1991.
John McPhee. Encounters with the Archdruid. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971.
Film: For Earth’s Sake: The Life and Times of David Brower. Documentary. Directed by John de Graaf. Bullfrog Films. 1989.
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967)
Ronald D. Cohen. Woody Guthrie: Writing America’s Songs. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Ed Cray. Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004.
Will Kaufman. Woody Guthrie: American Radical. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011.
Joe Klein. Woody Guthrie: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980.
Robert Santelli and Emily Davidson, eds. Hard Travelin’: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999.
Arthur Miller (1915–2005)
Susan C. W. Abbotson. Critical Companion to Arthur Miller. New York: Facts on File, 2007.
Christopher Bigsby, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Enoch Brater, ed. Arthur Miller’s America: Theater and Culture in a Time of Change. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
Martin Gottfried. Arthur Miller: His Life and Work. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003.
Arthur Miller. Timebends: A Life. New York: Penguin, 1995.
Anthony Flint. Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City. New York: Random House, 2009.
Roberta Brandes Gratz. The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. New York: Nation Books, 2010.
C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
G. William Domhoff. Who Rules America? Challenges to Corporate and Class Dominance. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.
Daniel Geary. Radical Ambition: C. Wright Mills, the Left, and American Social Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
Tom Hayden. Radical Nomad: C. Wright Mills and His Times. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2006.
C. Wright Mills. C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings. Edited by Kathryn Mills with Patricia Mills. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
John H. Summers, ed. The Politics of Truth: Selected Writings of C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Barry Commoner (1917–)
Barry Commoner. The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971.
Michael Egan. Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival: The Remaking of American Environmentalism. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.
Robert Gottlieb. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement, rev. ed. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003.
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977)
Chris Myers Asch. The Senator and the Sharecropper—The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer. New York: New Press, 2008.
Kay Mills. This Little Light of Mine: Fannie Lou Hamer. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.
Film: Standing on My Sisters’ Shoulders. Documentary. Directed by Laura Lipson. 2002.
Jackie Robinson (1919–1972)
Arnold Rampersad. Jackie Robinson: A Biography. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998.
Jackie Robinson. I Never Had It Made: The Autobiography of Jackie Robinson. New York: Putnam, 1972.
Jules Tygiel. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Pete Seeger (1919–)
David King Dunaway. How Can I Keep from Singing? The Ballad of Pete Seeger, rev. ed. New York: Villard Books, 2008.
Pete Seeger, Bob Reiser, Guy Carawan, and Candie Carawan. Everybody Says Freedom: A History of the Civil Rights Movement in Songs and Pictures. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.
Alec Wilkinson. The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
Alan Winkler. To Everything There Is a Season: Pete Seeger and the Power of Song. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Film: Pete Seeger: The Power of Song. Documentary. Directed by Jim Brown. 2007.
Jerry Wurf (1919–1981)
Joseph C. Goulden. Jerry Wurf: Labor’s Last Angry Man. New York: Atheneum, 1982.
Michael Honey. Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.
Bella Abzug (1920–1998)
Bella Abzug. Bella! Ms. Abzug Goes to Washington. Edited by Mel Ziegler. New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972.
———. Gender Gap: Bella Abzug’s Guide to Political Power for American Women. With Mim Kelber. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.
Suzanne Braun Levine and Mary Thom. Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the Rights of Women and Workers, Rallied Against War and for the Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along the Way. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
Betty Friedan (1921–2006)
Stephanie Coontz. A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s. New York: Basic Books, 2011.
Betty Friedan. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W. W. Norton, 1963.
———. It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement. New York: Random House, 1976.
———. Life So Far: A Memoir. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.
Daniel Horowitz. Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.
Kate Weigand. Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Howard Zinn (1922–2010)
Howard Zinn. You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.
———. The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1997.
Film: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train. Directed by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller. First Run Features. 2004.
Rev. William Sloane Coffin (1924–2006)
Taylor Branch. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Warren Goldstein. William Sloane Coffin, Jr.: A Holy Impatience. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
Film: William Sloane Coffin: An American Prophet. Documentary. Directed by John Ankele and Anne Macksoud. 2004.
Malcolm X (1925–1965)
David Gallen. Malcolm as They Knew Him. New York: Ballantine Books, 1995.
Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. With Alex Haley. New York: Grove Press, 1965.
Manning Marable. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. New York: Viking, 2011.
Film: Malcolm X. Directed by Spike Lee. 1992.
Cesar Chavez (1927–1993)
Marshall Ganz. Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Jacques E. Levy and Cesar Chavez. Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975.
Miriam Pawel. The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez’s Farm Workers Movement. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009.
Randy Shaw. Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
Film: The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement. Documentary. Directed by Rick Tejada-Flores and Ray Telles. Paradigm Productions. 1997.
Michael Harrington (1928–1989)
Gary Dorrien. Economy, Difference, Empire: Social Ethics for Social Justice. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
Michael Harrington. Fragments of a Century: A Social Autobiography. New York: Saturday Review Press, 1973.
———. The Long Distance Runner: An Autobiography. New York: Henry Holt, 1988.
Maurice Isserman. If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left. New York: Basic Books, 1987.
———. The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington. New York: PublicAffairs, 2000.
Frank Stricker. Why America Lost the War on Poverty–And How to Win It. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
Rev. James Lawson (1928–)
Raymond Arsenault. Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
David Halberstam. The Children. New York: Fawcett Books, 1999.
Michael Honey. Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.
Film: At the River I Stand. Documentary. Directed by David Appleby, Allison Graham, and Steven John Ross. 1993.
Noam Chomsky (1928–)
Robert Barsky. The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.
———. Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997.
Noam Chomsky. The Chomsky Reader. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987.
Film: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. Documentary. Directed by Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick. Humanist Broadcasting Foundation. 1993.
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968)
Taylor Branch. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Michael Eric Dyson. I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Free Press, 2001.
David J. Garrow. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. New York: W. Morrow, 1986.
Thomas F. Jackson. From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
Film: King: A Filmed Record. Montgomery to Memphis. Documentary. Directed by Sidney Lumet. 1970.
Allard Lowenstein (1929–1980)
Alan Brinkley. Liberalism and Its Discontents. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
William Chafe. Never Stop Running: Allard Lowenstein and the Struggle to Save American Liberalism. New York: Basic Books, 1993.
David Harris. Dreams Die Hard: Three Men’s Journey Through the Sixties. San Francisco: Mercury House, 1993.
Gregory Stone and Douglas Lowenstein, eds. Lowenstein: Acts of Courage and Belief. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.
Bruce Watson. Freedom Summer. New York: Viking Penguin, 2010.
Film: Citizen: The Political Life of Allard K. Lowenstein. Documentary. Directed by Julie M. Thompson. 1983.
Harvey Milk (1930–1978)
Randy Shilts. The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982.
Film: Milk. Directed by Gus Van Sant. 2008.
Film: The Times of Harvey Milk. Directed by Rob Epstein. Black Sand Productions. 1984.
Peter Canellos. The Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009.
Adam Clymer. Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography. New York: Harper, 2009.
Edward M. Kennedy. True Compass: A Memoir. New York: Twelve, 2009.
Ralph Nader (1934–)
Nancy Bowen. Ralph Nader: Man with a Mission. Brookfield, CT: Twenty-First Century Books, 2002.
Kevin Graham. Ralph Nader: Battling for Democracy. Denver, CO: Windom, 2000.
Patricia Cronin Marcello. Ralph Nader: A Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.
Film: An Unreasonable Man. Directed by Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan. 2007.
Gloria Steinem (1934–)
Carolyn Heilbrun. The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem. New York: Dial, 1995.
Sydney Ladensohn Stern. Gloria Steinem: Her Passions, Politics, and Mystique. Secaucus, NJ: Carol, 1997.
Film: Gloria: In Her Own Words. Directed by Peter Kunhardt. HBO. 2011.
Bill Moyers (1934–)
Bill Moyers. Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues. New York: New Press, 2011.
———. Moyers on Democracy. New York: Doubleday, 2008.
Bill Moyers and Julie L. Pycior. Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times. New York: New Press, 2004.
Bob Moses (1935–)
Taylor Branch. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Eric Burner. And Gently He Shall Lead Them: Robert Parris Moses and Civil Rights in Mississippi. New York: New York University Press, 1995.
Clayborne Carson. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Nicolaus Mills. Like a Holy Crusade: Mississippi 1964—The Turning of the Civil Rights Movement in America. New York: Ivan Dee, 1993.
Robert Moses and Charles Cobb. Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project. Boston: Beacon Press, 2002.
Charles Payne. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Barbara Ransby. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Bruce Watson. Freedom Summer. New York: Viking, 2010.
Film: Freedom on My Mind. Directed by Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford. California Newsreel. 1994.
Tom Hayden (1939–)
Tom Hayden. The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2009.
———. Reunion: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 1988.
———. Writings for a Democratic Society: The Tom Hayden Reader. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2008.
James Miller. Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Kirkpatrick Sale. SDS. New York: Random House, 1973.
John Lewis (1940–)
Raymond Arsenault. Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
David Halberstam. The Children. New York: Fawcett Books, 1999.
John Lewis. Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1998.
Film: Freedom Riders. Directed by Stanley Nelson. PBS. 2011.
Joan Baez (1941–)
Joan Baez. And a Voice to Sing With. New York: Summit Books, 1987.
David Hajdu. Positively Fourth Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
Bob Dylan (1941–)
Guy and Candie Carawan. Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs. Montgomery, AL: New South Books, 2007.
David Hajdu. Positively Fourth Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
Dorian Lynskey. 33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.
Anthony Scaduto. Dylan: An Intimate Biography. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1971.
Michael Schumaker. There but for Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs. New York: Hyperion, 1996.
Robert Shelton. No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan. New York: William Morrow, 1986.
Sean Wilentz. Dylan in America. New York: Doubleday, 2010.
Film: No Direction Home: Bob Dylan. Documentary. Directed by Martin Scorcese. PBS. 2005.
Barbara Ehrenreich (1941–)
Barbara Ehrenreich. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001.
———. The Worst Years of Our Lives. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990.
Jesse Jackson (1941–)
Frank Clemente. Keep Hope Alive: Jesse Jackson’s 1988 Presidential Campaign. Boston: South End Press, 1999.
Marshall Frady. Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson. New York: Random House, 1996.
Muhammad Ali (1942–)
Muhammad Ali. The Greatest: My Own Story. With Richard Durham. New York: Random House, 1975.
Thomas Hauser. Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.
Mike Marqusee. Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties. New York: Verso, 1999.
David Remnick. King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero. New York: Random House, 1998.
William C. Rhoden. Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete. New York: Crown Publisher, 2006.
David Zirin. Muhammad Ali Handbook. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2007.
———. People’s History of Sports in the United States: 250 Years of Politics, Protest, People, and Play. New York: New Press, 2009.
Billie Jean King (1943–)
Billie Jean King. Autobiography of Billie Jean. With Frank Deford. New York: HarperCollins, 1982.
———. Pressure Is a Privilege: Lessons I’ve Learned from Life and the Battle of the Sexes. With Christine Brennan. New York: LifeTime Media, 2008.
Selena Roberts. A Necessary Spectacle: Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs, and the Tennis Match That Leveled the Game. New York: Crown Publishers, 2005.
Susan Ware. Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women’s Sports. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.
Film: Billie Jean King: Portrait of a Pioneer. Documentary. Produced by Margaret Grossi. HBO. 2006.
Paul Wellstone (1944–2002)
Bill Lofy. Paul Wellstone: The Life of a Passionate Progressive. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
Dennis J. McGrath and Dane Smith. Professor Wellstone Goes to Washington: The Inside Story of a Grassroots U.S. Senate Campaign. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.
Paul Wellstone. The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
Film: Wellstone. Documentary. Directed by Pam Colby. 2004.
Bruce Springsteen (1949–)
Eric Alterman. It Ain’t No Sin to Be Glad You’re Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen. New York: Little, Brown, 1999.
Dave Marsh. Bruce Springsteen: Two Hearts. New York: Routledge, 2004.
David Masciotra. Working on a Dream: The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen. New York: Continuum, 2010.
Michael Moore (1954–)
Matthew Bernstein, ed. Michael Moore: Filmmaker, Newsmaker, Cultural Icon. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010.
Michael Moore. Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2011.
Michael Moore and Kathleen Glynn. Adventures in a TV Nation. New York: Random House, 1997.
Roger Rapoport. Citizen Moore: The Life and Times of an American Iconoclast. Muskegon, MI: RDR Books, 2006.
Emily Shultz. Michael Moore: A Biography. Toronto, Canada: ECW Press, 2005.
Tony Kushner (1956–)
James Fisher. Understanding Tony Kushner. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008.
Robert Vorlicky, ed. Tony Kushner in Conversation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998.