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Books That Were A "Trumpet Call"

Steven107

New Member
Hio!

Very happy to find this forum. I'm looking to find more non-fiction books that were very effective TRUMPET-CALLS to social change.

I am familiar with "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "The Jungle" and "Frenheit 451", but not with any NON-FICTION works that served this same HUGE "trumpet-call" purpose.

^ What might be some non-fiction books that served this role?

Thanks so much for the suggestions, I'm exciting to put more on my reading stack!

Best,
-Daniel
 
Hi Steven,

Welcome to the Forum.

I moved the thread to 'book search' for you as I think that not only does it belong there, but you will get more replies as well.

I'm not personally familiar with any non-fiction that would fall into this category (my non-fiction reading tends to be more pure science stuff than anything else) but I'm sure some one else will be able to help.
 
I am not quite sure if these are what you are looking for, but they are non-fiction books I have read and deal with social change. I will try to think of more but these 3 popped right out.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond

In his runaway bestseller "Guns, Germs, and Steel," Jared Diamond brilliantly examined the circumstances that allowed Western civilizations to dominate much of the world. Now he probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to fall into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? Using a vast historical and geographical perspective ranging from Easter Island and the Maya to Viking Greenland and modern Montana, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of environmental catastrophe?one whose warning signs can be seen in our modern world and that we ignore at our peril. Blending the most recent scientific advances into a narrative that is impossible to put down, "Collapse" exposes the deepest mysteries of the past even as it offers hope for the future.
?Diamond's most influential gift may be his ability to write about geopolitical and environmental systems in ways that don?t just educate and provoke, but entertain.? "?The Seattle Times"

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

by Isabel Wilkerson

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.

With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
by Anne Fadiman
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction

When three-month-old Lia Lee Arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit and fiercely people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most immigrants, adhering steadfastly to the rituals and beliefs of their ancestors. Lia's pediatricians, Neil Ernst and his wife, Peggy Philip, cleaved just as strongly to another tradition: that of Western medicine. When Lia Lee Entered the American medical system, diagnosed as an epileptic, her story became a tragic case history of cultural miscommunication.

Parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their ideas about the causes of her illness and its treatment could hardly have been more different. The Hmong see illness aand healing as spiritual matters linked to virtually everything in the universe, while medical community marks a division between body and soul, and concerns itself almost exclusively with the former. Lia's doctors ascribed her seizures to the misfiring of her cerebral neurons; her parents called her illness, qaug dab peg--the spirit catches you and you fall down--and ascribed it to the wandering of her soul. The doctors prescribed anticonvulsants; her parents preferred animal sacrifices.
 
Wow, thanks so much, guys! This is great. Anything else along these lines is fantastic. Maybe "Guns, Germs and Steele" is a good fit, too?

Thanks again!
Best,
-Daniel
 
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