Paul Rogat Loeb

Paul Rogat Loeb has spent forty-five years researching and writing about citizen responsibility and empowerment--asking what makes some people choose lives of social commitment, while others abstain, and exploring how to find the hope to stay engaged despite all the frustrations and barriers. Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in a Challenging Time has over 175,000 copies in print (St Martin's Press). The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times (Basic Books), has 125,000 copies and Basic released a wholly updated edition in 2026. The Impossible was named the #3 political book of fall 2004 by the History Channel and American Book Association, and won the Nautilus Award for best social change book, as did Soul of a Citizen, and was one of six books selected for the Sierra Club's new common reading groups. Paul is also the author of Generation at the Crossroads, Nuclear Culture, and Hope in Hard Times. He's written for the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Psychology Today, Mother Jones, The Nation, Redbook, Huffington Post, the International Herald Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor, been interviewed on CNN, NPR, C-SPAN, NBC news, CBC, and the BBC, and lectured at 500 colleges throughout the country and numerous national and international conferences. He founded and ran two nonpartisan election engagement projects, the first of which engaged hundreds of colleges to get people to vote, and the second of which distributed over 8 million nonpartisan candidate guides in 2024.