What people are saying.
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“As we face a new wave of American fascism, we would be wise to look to the everyday leaders who fought back Jim Crow and transformed our politics and culture in the 1960s. Michael Ansara’s memoir is beautifully written, insightful, often humorous, and right on time.”
— Heather McGhee, bestselling author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
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“Michael Ansara’s book is a fast paced, fascinating read about the 60s generation, told from the inside – with real and important lessons for our own generation. Young progressives need to learn from the past as we prepare for the future – and Michael Ansara‘s Hard Work of Hope offers us some indispensable lessons not just in how to achieve our goals but how to stay healthy and whole as well."
— David Hogg, Co-Founder & President, Leaders We Deserve, Co-Founder & Board Member, March for Our Lives
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“This book is not only essential raw material for understanding the 1960s and understanding political organizing, it’s human, wry, wise and funny—which are, after all, essential qualities of a good organizer. Don’t miss the story of Michael Ansara’s draft physical.”
— Adam Hochschild, bestselling author of more than 15 books including King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa and his most recent book American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis.
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“Today there’s a renewed interest among young people in organizing and direct action for racial, economic, and climate justice. It would be a loss if these activists had to “reinvent the wheel” without learning from a previous generation’s victories—and its mistakes. Michael Ansara, one of that era’s most effective organizers, led movements across civil rights, anti-war, and economic justice campaigns. There is no better place to start to learn the lessons of the past than Michael Ansara’s The Hard Work of Hope.”
—Richard Rothstein, author The Color of Law
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“Michael Ansara’s book is just about unique in describing organizing not just as an essential political craft, but as a way of life — he brings the texture of that life fully and vividly before us without bravado or hand-waving. The Hard Work of Hope is the most perceptive account I’ve ever read of the culture of organizing—its strategic thinking, its dilemmas, its rhythms, its promises, its perils, whether organizing against a monstrous war or on behalf of the public’s material needs. A must-read account from the Sixties forward.”
Todd Gitlin, author of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
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“Overflows with passion, humor, and insight about the joys and agonies of organizing to stop the Vietnam War and to change America in fundamental ways...”
— Michael Kazin, professor of history, Georgetown University and editor emeritus, Dissent magazine
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“This memoir revives the spirit of the movement of the 60s and 70s, with organizing insights, warm human portraits and important lessons for today.”
— Heather Booth, Founder, Midwest Academy
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“The Hard Work of Hope tells a remarkable story of how a young man, of Syrian-Lebanese descent, inspired by the vision, courage, and creativity of the American Civil Rights movement becomes an activist and evolves into one of his generation's most effective community organizers.”
— Kenneth Reardon, University of Massachusetts, Boston
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“Michael Ansara’s memoir is a beautifully rendered, brutally honest narrative of a remarkable life. The book is many things: a page-turner of an autobiography, a manual for effecting social change, a chronicle of a remarkable era. For a new generation of activists, the book contains invaluable lessons forged through inspiring successes and devastating failures. For those of us fortunate to have lived through those times, the book evokes real nostalgia for magical moments when change was in the air and anything seemed possible. “
—Jeffrey Mayersohn, Harvard Book Store