Announcing: our host’s new books about ChangeMaking
Amanda Tattersall has been busy over the past few years researching and writing about how to make a difference. The result is TWO new books about changemaking.
The first book is CONSCIOUS TRIBES: THINKING DIFFERENTLY ABOUT MAKING A DIFFERENCE (releasing August 2026, pre-order now, published by Hardie Grant)
Written like you are having a conversation with Amanda, this book is full of stories about her and other’s experience making a difference, and is designed to push us to rethink some of our assumptions about how to make a difference.
She challenges the idea that there can be a silver bullet or “right way” to make change, and instead builds a map of public life that seeks to make it easier for any of us to navigate the social change terrain we face. The book identifies seven paradoxes – public and private, power over and power with, sameness and difference – that show up when we work with others to make an impact, and unpacks them to explore the range of choices we can make.
At its core the book is a celebration of our ability to make a difference, but it also aims to make us more conscious of our choices given the paradoxes and challenges we face. Its why making a difference isn’t something we do on our own, but with others in tribes. But for Amanda, tribes aren’t just big social change organisations – she offers a way to reimagine the potential of groups that we are already in – Parents & Citizens groups, workplace committees and book clubs as well as what we can do in traditional changemaking organisations. Amanda offers a way to hold some of the tensions and challenges we face in making a difference in this increasingly difficult world by drawing lessons from the challenges she has navigated in her own life, such as living with bipolar.
The book has the feel of a Michael Lewis narrative (think Liars Poker) sharing the stories and insights six extraordinary people from around the world – including our ChangeMakers Digest co-host Samuel Chu, as well as Sara Bryson, Issara Saeyim, John Robertson, Suzanne Dzus / Kise-Pisim and Maha Abdo. But its aim is not only to tell stories, but to share stories in ways that can help us change our world.
The second book is PEOPLE POWER IN CITIES, co-authored with Kurt Iveson (published May 2026).
This book explores the different people power strategies being used by groups and movements in cities across the world to make a difference.
Written with changemakers and changemaker researchers in mind, it delves into the features of different ways that groups and movements involve people and build power to make an impact. It looks at playing by the rules (and how representative democracy creates opportunities for influence), mobilising (mass protest), organising (unusual alliances and leadership development), prefiguring (modelling the change you seek through community experiments) and running for office (becoming elected representatives to make change).
Having mapped over 1500 examples of people power across the world, Tattersall and Iveson identify some of the similar strategic dilemmas people face in making change. The book then looks at the different ways people respond to these challenges, and draws out common patterns across different cities to build a language that can help us identifying the various ways people are choosing to build and use people power to make change.
The book shared case studies of urban change in Austin (housing and land use), Hong Kong (mass protest around democratic rights), Sydney (multicultural communities and climate change), Cape Town (a Black housing movement desegregating the city) and Barcelona (Barcelona en Comú and what urban political movements like Mamdani can learn). It ends with a different way of thinking about strategy – arguing that no one strategy is superior, that each have strengths and weakenesses, and that an ecology of people power, where strategies work in productive cohabitation, offers a way forward.