You're More Powerful Than You Think: A Citizen's Guide to Making Change Happen

Political tension and uncertainty can produce feelings of helplessness amid injustice and dramatic change. While such thinking is understandable, Eric Liu (A Chinaman's Chance) presents effective strategies for individuals and groups to harness their potential by amplifying their voices and elevating causes.

Defining power as "the capacity to ensure that others do as you would want them to do," Liu focuses You're More Powerful Than You Think not on personal or professional empowerment but on the political. It's an arena he knows well. A former White House speechwriter, policy adviser and deputy assistant to President Bill Clinton for domestic policy, Liu offers a seasoned perspective regarding the influential impact of global campaigns such as Brexit and movements that include, among others, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Feel the Bern and $15 Now in the United States.

Each of these initiatives represent "a moment of citizen power [and] a deeply optimistic surge" with the same three core concepts that ordinary people have adopted throughout history, with positive results. "Because power creates monopolies and is winner-take-all, you must change the game. Power creates a story of why it's legitimate. You must change the story. Power is assumed to be finite and zero-sum. You must change the equation."

Embracing one's power can feel daunting at the onset but becomes achievable through experience, he writes. "True alienation is deadly silent and sullen. The upheaval and ruckus of our times are hopeful at heart. People still believe change is possible." --Melissa Firman, writer, editor and blogger at melissafirman.com

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