I'm sure I'm not the first person to be accused of having overly optimistic visions of changing the world. Young people are often typecast as "idealistic youth"--not inherently a bad thing, but meant to imply that they're not going to achieve what they set out to. This generation's young people, however, have a much better sense of what it actually takes to make change in the world. They're not afraid to do everything they can to make a difference. This is why I am extremely excited by a new book by Courtney E. Martin called Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists.

The book looks at the age-old quest for meaning--Who am I? What is my calling? How can I make the world better?--in a new light. According to the description, "Courtney E. Martin abandons the empty 'save the world' rhetoric and '60s nostalgia that her generation was raised on and doggedly pursues the gritty truth about social change in contemporary America. It's complicated. It's challenging. And, yet, it's still possible."

The book does this by featuring the lives of eight activists, including a prison re-entry social worker at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, an African American climate change activist out of Detroit, and an actor struggling to use her celebrity for social change while staying authentic in her activism. They're ordinary young people who are extraordinary by nature of the fact that they are searching for (and realizing) their own way to make a difference.

The Character Approved book is a bold statement contrary to the portrait of an apathetic, self-centered generation. In fact, it reveals a new kind of person--one who takes "good" from the sidelines and puts it back at the center of everything they do, and who does everything they can to live differently.

[Images: Do It Anyway]