On Courage: To Be a Dissident in America's Age of Fear

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist and a former White House senior advisor, a deeply reported manual for how individuals can resist America’s slide away from democracy, based on original interviews with more than 100 dissidents, activists, and theorists across the world.

The United States has crossed into a new and unfamiliar realm—one in which daring to challenge the state carries real danger. Ordinary Americans now face a government that feels more like foreign autocracies, with a White House stretching the powers of the presidency beyond recognition. The sitting president wields fear as a weapon, punishes political enemies, intimidates sitting members of Congress, bends private businesses to his will, and disappears student protesters off the streets.

Based on their acclaimed The New Yorker essay “So You Want to Be a Dissident?: A Practical Guide to Courage in Trump's Age of Fear,” Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Julia Angwin and former White House senior advisor Ami Fields-Meyer deliver a guide to courage in America’s age of fear. On Courage is a captivating collection of stories and lessons from the front lines of the fight for the future of the free world that invite action and rouse hope.

Step into the room where the world’s new dissidents—ordinary people, in the U.S. and around the world, who never aspired to be activists—are writing the playbook for courage, risk, and resistance in the age of authoritarianism and unprecedented digital surveillance.

On Courage simplifies the calculus of activism by making more accessible than ever the fundamentals of taking political risk. It’s a handbook that is equal parts practical and spiritual, a valuable resource and a powerful message for anyone, anywhere, who feels the walls of history closing in on them.

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On Courage: To Be a Dissident in America's Age of Fear

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist and a former White House senior advisor, a deeply reported manual for how individuals can resist America’s slide away from democracy, based on original interviews with more than 100 dissidents, activists, and theorists across the world.

The United States has crossed into a new and unfamiliar realm—one in which daring to challenge the state carries real danger. Ordinary Americans now face a government that feels more like foreign autocracies, with a White House stretching the powers of the presidency beyond recognition. The sitting president wields fear as a weapon, punishes political enemies, intimidates sitting members of Congress, bends private businesses to his will, and disappears student protesters off the streets.

Based on their acclaimed The New Yorker essay “So You Want to Be a Dissident?: A Practical Guide to Courage in Trump's Age of Fear,” Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Julia Angwin and former White House senior advisor Ami Fields-Meyer deliver a guide to courage in America’s age of fear. On Courage is a captivating collection of stories and lessons from the front lines of the fight for the future of the free world that invite action and rouse hope.

Step into the room where the world’s new dissidents—ordinary people, in the U.S. and around the world, who never aspired to be activists—are writing the playbook for courage, risk, and resistance in the age of authoritarianism and unprecedented digital surveillance.

On Courage simplifies the calculus of activism by making more accessible than ever the fundamentals of taking political risk. It’s a handbook that is equal parts practical and spiritual, a valuable resource and a powerful message for anyone, anywhere, who feels the walls of history closing in on them.

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On Courage: To Be a Dissident in America's Age of Fear

On Courage: To Be a Dissident in America's Age of Fear

On Courage: To Be a Dissident in America's Age of Fear

On Courage: To Be a Dissident in America's Age of Fear

eBook

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Overview

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist and a former White House senior advisor, a deeply reported manual for how individuals can resist America’s slide away from democracy, based on original interviews with more than 100 dissidents, activists, and theorists across the world.

The United States has crossed into a new and unfamiliar realm—one in which daring to challenge the state carries real danger. Ordinary Americans now face a government that feels more like foreign autocracies, with a White House stretching the powers of the presidency beyond recognition. The sitting president wields fear as a weapon, punishes political enemies, intimidates sitting members of Congress, bends private businesses to his will, and disappears student protesters off the streets.

Based on their acclaimed The New Yorker essay “So You Want to Be a Dissident?: A Practical Guide to Courage in Trump's Age of Fear,” Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Julia Angwin and former White House senior advisor Ami Fields-Meyer deliver a guide to courage in America’s age of fear. On Courage is a captivating collection of stories and lessons from the front lines of the fight for the future of the free world that invite action and rouse hope.

Step into the room where the world’s new dissidents—ordinary people, in the U.S. and around the world, who never aspired to be activists—are writing the playbook for courage, risk, and resistance in the age of authoritarianism and unprecedented digital surveillance.

On Courage simplifies the calculus of activism by making more accessible than ever the fundamentals of taking political risk. It’s a handbook that is equal parts practical and spiritual, a valuable resource and a powerful message for anyone, anywhere, who feels the walls of history closing in on them.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780063491960
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 06/30/2026
Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
Format: eBook
Pages: 288

About the Author

Julia Angwin is a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and monthly contributing writer for New York Times Opinion. In 2018, she founded The Markup, an award-winning nonprofit newsroom that produces meaningful data-centered journalism about technology and the people affected by it. Before founding The Markup, she led investigative teams at ProPublica and The Wall Street Journal that pioneered the coverage of privacy and algorithmic accountability. She is a winner and two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism.


Ami Fields-Meyer is a political strategist, speechwriter, and former White House senior policy advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris. He is a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and has served as a top advisor to political candidates, leaders of major civil rights groups, and high-profile public officials from Los Angeles City Hall to the West Wing.

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