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Understanding Leisure in the Ever-Changing World: Power, Privileges, and Promises is an interactive textbook that seeks, in the words of John Lewis, to inspire students to enact meaningful “good trouble, necessary trouble” (https://resources.newamericanhistory.org/for-students-good-trouble). This text asks students and all readers to consider some of the key issues related to understanding leisure at this social, political, and historical moment in time—the third decade of the 21st century. A central tenet of this book is that leisure is key to the functioning (and malfunctioning) of a democratic society. For example, the recent pandemic has led millions of people to reconsider the role of work and, by extension, leisure in their lives. #metoo and #blm (Black Lives Matter) movements have raised awareness of how leisure reproduces, but may also challenge and transform, social inequality and injustices. That is, this book provides students with the opportunity to understand and explore the various ways in which we can understand the constraints, the power, and the promise of leisure for individuals, communities, and societies. More than three dozen authors from across the U.S. and abroad challenge readers to examine the impact of leisure on how they see themselves, and their relationships with others and the world. The book is organized into five sections—Leisure and Me; Defining and Redefining Leisure; the Messiness and Complicatedness of Leisure; Engaging and/or Disengaging in Leisure; and the Challenges of Leisure. In each section and chapter, students are asked to read, reflect, and act on topics ranging from how much freedom we have in leisure, to why freedom is more an illusion than a reality for many, to the centrality of leisure, recreation and play for a democratic society. Understanding Leisure in the Ever-Changing World: Power, Privileges, and Promises makes full use of interactive media, providing links to relevant podcasts, videos, blogs, popular media, scholarly writing, etc. to engage readers in pressing issues of today.