The Art of Changing Minds

The Persuaders is an insider account of activists, politicians, educators, and everyday citizens who are on the ground working to change minds, bridge divisions, and fight for democracy.

The Persuaders by Anand Giridharadas yellow book cover

Find the Book On

Inside The Persuaders

The lifeblood of any free society is persuasion: changing other people’s minds in order to change things. But America is suffering a crisis of faith in persuasion that is putting its democracy and the planet itself at risk. Americans increasingly write one another off instead of seeking to win one another 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 mobilizing the faithful rather than wooing the skeptical. And leaders who seek to forge coalitions are labeled sellouts.

In The Persuaders, Anand Giridharadas takes us inside these movements and battles, seeking out the dissenters who continue to champion persuasion in an age of polarization. We meet a leader of Black Lives Matter; a trailblazer in the feminist resistance to Trumpism; white parents at a seminar on raising adopted children of color; Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; a team of door knockers with an uncanny formula for changing minds on immigration; an ex-cult member turned QAnon deprogrammer; and, hovering menacingly offstage, Russian operatives clandestinely stoking Americans’ fatalism about one another.

As the book’s subjects grapple with how to call out threats and injustices while calling in those who don’t agree with them but just might one day, they point a way to healing, and changing, a fracturing country.

  • "Incredibly hopeful. Every now and then, I come across something that makes me think in a completely new way, and this was one of those times."

    Brené Brown
    New York Times bestselling author of Daring Greatly

  • “Anand Giridharadas shows the way we get real progressive change in America—by refusing to write others off, building more welcoming movements, and rededicating ourselves to the work of changing minds.”

    Robert B. Reich
    Best-selling author of The System

Become a better persuader

Download Anand’s free guide that includes six lessons in building trust, bridging division, and changing minds.

Inspired by the people he studied and learned from in The Persuaders, here are six ways to open a door to more effective conversations for change with real people you care about and interact with in your communities.