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A collection of some of Stanford Social Innovation Review's most popular book reviews and excerpts published in 2025:
Advancing Peace: Ending Urban Gun Violence Through the Power of Redemptive Love, by Jason Corburn and DeVone Boggan, reviewed by Lee Romney
After learning that nearly three-fourths of the previous year’s 45 homicides were attributed to just 17 people, Boggan in 2010 resolved to focus specifically on that core group of active shooters. The result was an intensive 18-24 month “Peacemaker Fellowship,” now at the heart of the Advance Peace model, that surrounds its participants—who are deemed to be both responsible for the greatest violence and empowered to broker the greatest peace—in love and support … Nearly two decades later, the program remains embedded in municipal government, and the results speak for themselves: There were just 8 gun homicides in 2023, down from a high of 47 in 2007, a trend that held even during the pandemic, when other urban centers saw gun violence spike. (Open to nonsubscribers for a limited time. Subscribe here.)
Poor Relief: Why Giving People Money Is Not the Answer to Global Poverty by Heath Henderson (excerpted)
“Cash transfers are a flawed way to address extreme poverty. Cash programs do not combat the deep, structural issues that serve to keep people poor, such as racism or sexism, lack of access to quality education or health care, and even political exclusion. In addition, money can’t buy everything a person needs to escape poverty, like a stable climate, clean water, or access to markets. Furthermore, some people can be left behind or outright harmed by cash programs, particularly women and children. Given the limitations of cash transfers, it is no surprise that people living in poverty often prefer other forms of support. I ultimately argue that impactful and respectful poverty alleviation requires being more responsive to the voices of people in poverty, rather than assuming markets know best.”
Host Cities: How Refugees Are Transforming the World’s Urban Settings by Karen Jacobsen, reviewed by Lauren Markham
“The number of refugees living in cities around the world has been increasing significantly for decades, as many are leaving sprawling camps like Dadaab or Zaatari for cities like Cairo, Athens, Beirut, Dar es Salaam, or Nairobi … In her new book, Host Cities: How Refugees Are Transforming the World’s Urban Settings, political scientist Karen Jacobsen explores how they are transforming the urban landscape but also how to adapt infrastructure and funding systems for the betterment of refugees and locals alike.” (Open to nonsubscribers for a limited time. Subscribe here.)
From the Ground Up: The Women Revolutionizing Regenerative Agriculture by Stephanie Anderson (excerpted)
“In the white Western agricultural tradition, women have long done farmwork, but men typically claimed the title of farmer or rancher because men did most of the “real” physical work. To this day in many conventional agriculture circles, women are usually understood as helpers or hobby farmers, not as farmers or agriculture leaders in their own right. “Women have been invisible in this space for a long time, but they’ve been very much a part of the ag world,” Roesch-McNally says. “I still laugh when I talk to women who are like, ‘Oh, I’m not the farmer, that’s my husband, but I’ve been doing the farm books.’ In any other business if you did all of the accounting and finances, you would consider yourself a critical component of the business. But in agriculture, it’s different.”
Sink or Swim: How the World Needs to Adapt to a Changing Climate by Susannah Fisher (excerpted)
“These alternative futures highlight the stark choices facing the global food system. The impacts of climate change will affect where and how food is produced, where animals and fish can survive and how food is moved around the world. It will exacerbate existing inequalities and is the ultimate demonstration of the huge injustices of climate change. Countries along the tropics that had no substantive role in causing climate change could be facing the loss of their growing lands for agriculture and their wild animal and fsh populations could move on with no new ones expected to move in. There are, then, several hard choices on the horizon.”
The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity, by Sarah Schulman, reviewed by Nathan Schneider
A lot in progressive politics these days is riding on remembering, or even reinventing, the meaning of solidarity. If there is a way out of the co-optation and circular firing squads of “woke,” out of a derelict Democratic Party that traded broad membership organizations for wealth-led donor activism, and out of the latest cycle of genocidal violence enabled by US treasure and arms, surely solidarity is that way. It sounds strong in a time of weakness. The word is old but has been neglected long enough to have regained some mystique. And yet what does it mean in the United States, a society with seemingly negligible labor-union density, with no recognizable workers’ party or peace movement, with so few institutional manifestations of what the word used to signify?
A World of Wounds: Rebuilding a Bipartisan Environmental Movement and Cultivating Authentic Hope by Nancy J. Manring (excerpted)
“We need a hopeful story of environmental politics that inspires and empowers people to vote, work, and advocate for the protection of our planetary home. I wrote A World of Wounds: Rebuilding a Bipartisan Environmental Movement and Cultivating Authentic Hope to debunk the conventional story of environmental politics. I argue that the perceived partisan divide in environmental politics has been purposely manufactured by conservative opponents of the environmental movement. This artificial partisan gulf has alienated Americans from each other and masked Americans’ traditional love of our natural heritage. Concern for environmental conservation is deeply embedded in notions of American patriotism. All across the political spectrum, people care about wildlife conservation, public lands, and outdoor recreation as well as clean air and water.”
Power to the Partners: Organizational Coalitions in Social Justice Advocacy by Maraam A. Dwidar (excerpted)
“What truly distinguishes successful coalitions is their ability to build partnerships with strong architectures and mobilize many different, crosscutting interests in pursuit of a shared ideal. These organizations, keenly aware of their competitors and constraints, use coalition work to compensate for individual shortcomings and progressively build movements. They partner with longtime allies and former opponents, strategically invest their resources, and make careful compromises.”
Budget Justice: On Building Grassroots Politics and Solidarities by Celina Su, reviewed by Hollie Russon Gilman
“Participatory budgeting is not a silver bullet, and she does not romanticize it. But it is a meaningful starting point for shifting power and fostering civic learning. As such, it can help build what she calls “an ecosystem of participation,” drawing from scholars of deliberative democracy like Jane Mansbridge and John Parkinson. Instead of seeing civic engagement as a series of isolated events—voting, attending a meeting, or responding to a survey—Su describes an interconnected, ongoing ecosystem of participation, from democratic innovations like participatory budgeting to informal networks of mutual aid, advocacy, and cultural expression.”
The Democratic Marketplace: How a More Equal Economy Can Save Our Political Ideals by Lisa Herzog (excerpted)
“What should democratic societies do? There is no shortage of proposals for inequality-reducing policies, apart from simply increasing taxes on high income and wealth (and closing tax loopholes). One policy that could be a powerful counterweight to the inequality of wealth is a combination of an inheritance tax and a capital grant for young people who do not inherit, for purposes such as financing an education, starting a business, or making a down payment for a mortgage. It could be designed differently depending on the specific needs of different societies, with variations in not only the amount of money but also the purposes for which it could be used.”
Read more stories by SSIR Editors.