I hope readers would start with the first few pages of the book. In the introduction, I recount the story of how the American Legion advocated for passage of the GI Bill, which promoted a program of wide-ranging and generous benefits for those who served in the U.S. military during WWII. The campaign included all of the components of what I describe in the book as the social change matrix: a formula for bringing about progressive social change.Those components include what I call Medium, Network, and Message. The first of these, Medium, involves the use of contemporary communications technologies. The book goes into case after case of successful social movements utilizing the most modern means of communications available to them to advance positive social change. But many successful social movements that I highlight in the book also utilized these other two components of the social change matrix.The second component, the Network represents the development of the type of trans-local network I have described here. These are groups that have a local base where individual members can meet and confer on a face-to-face basis, but those local nodes are connected to a broader initiative, one that has regional, state, and national reach.Finally, the last component, Message, reflects the fact that most of these successful social movements have promoted a positive, inclusive message that stresses shared humanity and shared destiny and is often designed to combat inequality in some form, from racial inequality to inequality based on gender or sexual orientation or gender expression. It is here that we see the notion of interest convergence coming into play: groups that embrace a broad, inclusive message are likely to uncover the potential for overlapping interests among different groups.Even if those interests are not identical, they can converge, and that convergence of interests often invites diverse groups to strive toward a similar goal. And when this occurs, interest convergence can often lead to powerful coalition building. In the story of the passage of the GI Bill, which I return to throughout the work, we can see these different elements of this social change matrix all at play.My hope is that advocates will learn not just from the examples of successful social change efforts from the past, but also the contemporary case studies I highlight. Advocates can learn how to use the technologies at their disposal today, as well as those that are likely to emerge in the future.Think of examples like the #MeToo movement or the campaign for Marriage Equality. These efforts have stressed shared humanity and shared destiny. Successful coalitions such as these do not always consist of people or organizations that agree on everything or see the world in completely the same way. Instead, successful coalitions often come together around shared interests, even self-interest: Alexis de Tocqueville, that French observer of American life in the early 19th century, described this as self-interest “well understood”.When this self-interest is blended across different groups, that is, when a movement experiences what the late Derrick Bell called an “interest convergence,” unlikely alliances can form. Bell argued that the victory in the decision in Brown v. Board of Education came about because the Civil Rights Movement shared the goal of dismantling the Jim Crow system with white elites. Civil rights advocates wanted to attack the system because of its impact on the African-American community. White elites saw that system as harming the American reputation abroad as the U.S. was locked in a cold war with the Soviet Union. This interest convergence ultimately led to the demise of the Jim Crow system.What I try to do in the book is show other examples of groups forming coalitions in light of the shared interests of sometimes oppositional groups. In one case study, I describe the efforts of a union to raise the minimum wage for hotel workers in Long Beach, CA. The workers attracted allies among the small business community as well as local homeowners. Both of these groups wanted to see local workers earning more so that they would spend more in local shops, improving the quality of life for everyone. The workers and these other groups did not see eye-to-eye on every issue but the coalition they formed was so powerful, and it won a ballot referendum on the issue of hotel workers wages so convincingly, that it had union leaders wondering if they should have asked for an even higher wage than that they were able to secure through the referendum.What this and other examples in the book show is that coalitions can be created among seemingly unlikely allies if leaders search for areas where interests may overlap, and leverage those overlapping interests to fight for real, lasting, and meaningful change. This book explores how to do that in today’s fast-moving media environment.