I started collecting good books a couple years ago. By good I mean, those that will get you the real education your structured schooling (in the U.S. anyway) didn’t get you.

I mean a socialist education. Turns out the study of capital and sociology and economics from a socialist perspective is the only one that gets you accurate results. Ask the folks at Upstream Podcast to describe why. (They have episodes about this.) Even literary criticism has been shown to not function logically if done through a neoliberal lens.

Virtually everyone I know who did structured schooling in the U.S., public or private, was not made aware of the ideas in the book list below. Including, especially and unfortunately, me. It took decades of self-study as an adult to compile this knowledge and this list. I want you to easily have that which was hard-won for me and many others in the West.

If you’re afraid to read them, just remember: being afraid of examining any idea probably means you suspect your own ideas could have weaknesses.

Before the full list, we will start with a sample book club list. I took the twelve “gateway drug” (and/or inspiring) books here and wrote some compelling copy that you could use to start your own local book club.

At the beginning of the full list is a list of late additions in the last ~6 months, which just means I haven’t looked up the ISBNs or added the subtitles. Sorry!

Book appetit!

-Brandon

Intro To The World Via Socialism: A 14-month Book Club that concludes with six months of hope and strategy

Month 1 – Blackshirts and Reds is one of the better introductions (in English) to socialism, worker history, and the neoliberal fishbowl we’re all swimming in, all wrapped up in a book written for the beginner and the common reader. You don’t need to be an academic to understand it. And you’ll finish with your mouth agape.

Month 2 – Women, Race & Class by Angela Davis introduces us to a class-conscious account of life in America, and in case you are white, or a man, you’ll get an excellent sense of what it’s like not to be. These things are all linked and it’s best we understand how early on. Solidarity across all people groups is the only way forward, and we need to have some experience with other groups to offer a more genuine solidarity.

Month 3 – This month has two books because they’re quick reads and both rely on heavy visuals. The graphic novel Communist Manifesto Illustrated, and Visualizing Palestine, which is reproductions of hundreds of infographics about the subjugation of indigenous Palestinians by their occupiers. (If you think this situation is complicated, this book is for you!) These two together are the into-the-frying-pan introduction to leftist thinking, dipping our toes into a historical perspective and visiting the modern issue of apartheid in the holy land: something that today you can lose your career over, be thrown into prison over, or be kicked out of mainstream political circles due to “The Palestine Exception.”

Month 4 – Copaganda, by superstar lawyer and prophetic critic of the “human caging machine” Alec Karakatsanis. This book pulls no punches about the insidious way police culture has infected liberal minds and media outlets—and how it’s kept that way by de facto capture of elite institutions by police organizations. If you don’t think police are all that bad, this book is for you; the author brings receipts. Sorely needed, as police are the tip of the fascist spear and they almost exclusively target the poor.

Month 5 – Working Class History, a dedicated collective’s compendium of heart-wrenching & seminal true stories from the worker’s perspective… paired with the graphic novel and Black Coal & Red Bandanas, about armed Union struggle in West Virginia coal mines. For a snapshot, watch the 1987 feature flick “Matewan.” As David Graeber was fond of saying, the “middle class” is a faux class, which serves to misplace the solidarity of upper echelons of workers (who have some marginal power). In reality, if you work to pay your bills, you should be proud to be part of the “working class.” P.S. my direct ancestors fought in these battles for unions in WV coal country.

Month 6 – Revolution In Our Time, the definitive historical account of the Black Panthers, who accomplished hands down the most important social experiment—and social practice—of the last hundred years. These proud black people built a future society for themselves, now, and were brutally crushed for it by white governments local, state, and federal. We have a lot to learn from them; after reading you might be flabbergasted, finishing with a fist in the air.

Month 7 – The Racket, about how those with mind-boggling power today wield their power. (You might call them “oligarchs”; both major political parties are subservient to them and have little to no hope of changing.) These people do it with monopoly, economic strangleholds and, if necessary, the terrible violence of nation-states all too giddy to do their bidding. This is the book the ruling class didn’t want published.

Month 8 – Bullshit Jobs, one of the seminal theories, in this case in book form, of the late, great sociological philosopher David Graeber. This should get us all thinking about what is really necessary in a society, and perhaps thinking that a little “planned economy” wouldn’t hurt that much after all. Not much could be worse than the system we have now!

Month 9 – Less Is More, a Marxist-Leninist economist’s treatise on “degrowth,” (technically, its primary theorist), written for a popular audience. Degrowth appears to be the only way to exist in a state of equilibrium with the natural resources of this planet… and if you think it’s most of us “doing more with less,” I think that’s mostly not it. A few thousand people and a few thousand non-beneficial institutions consume ten million times more than you and me, each—and they need addressing first.

Month 10 – The Freedom Manifesto, about the rarely-discussed question of, “What would anarchism look like on a personal level?” If we only discuss organizing and helping others (the largest contingent of this book list), then how do we know what to do with and by ourselves, where we likely spend most of our time? This is perhaps my favorite book of all, by the founder/editor of UK magazine “The Idler,” which has a de facto mission of bringing back respectability to non-productivity.

Month 11 – A Hacker’s Mind, a book for the masses by the preeminent English-speaking computer security consultant since that became a thing. Hear me out: the guy argues that everyone needs to learn how to break systems—sociological systems, political systems, economic systems—and teaches you how to think in order to do it. How to spot the “chinks in the armor” of the invisible battalions maintaining the status quo. If you ever doubted whether you were capable of dreaming up a strategy that could effect social change, don’t write yourself off until you’ve read this book.

Month 12 – Hegemony How-to is the road map to building and maintaining the kind of power that’s been wielded against majority populations, and especially against the global south currently, since the proliferation of mass production ~150 years ago. Without building, using, and maintaining power, these majority populations (of which you and I are a part) will continue being subjugated and the majority value of our labor siphoned away.

Month 13 – Socialist Reconstruction describes what the first ten years of a socialist United States would want and need to be like. That transition period might seem scary for many, but it needn’t be with helpful answers to key questions like, How would we actually (re)organize our economy & society if we had the ability to make it maximally egalitarian, productive, and to joyful/flourishing ends? This covers the nitty-gritty and gives us a vision.

Month 14 – Inventing the Future imagines what we’re working toward—the “Star Trek future”—with a full view of technology and automation available today. (Crucially, in a scenario where workers control the means of our technological futures.) Basically, given the wild changes that have taken place since Marx’s time and what’s possible in the foreseeable future, what would Marx recommend doing? How much stuff that we don’t want to do (That is to say, work) would we actually need to do per week?

Full Book List:

Late additions include:

Lenin, V.I.; What Is To Be Done?

Karakatsanis, Alec; Copaganda

Shakur, Assata; Assata

Marx, Engels; The Communist Manifesto, Illustrated (Red Quill Books)

Lee, Micah; Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations

Merchant, Brian; Blood in the Machine

Cobb Jr., Charles E.; This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed

Fanon, Frantz; The Wretched of the Earth

Halasa, Elgrably; Sumud

Editors of In These Times; The Age of Inequality

Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne; An Indigenous People’s History of the United States

Douglass, Roderick; Starting Somewhere…

Lenin, V.I.; The State and Revolution

Lenin, V.I.; Imperialism and the National Question

Liberation Media; Socialist Reconstruction

Tucker; The Marx-Engels Reader

Varoufakis, Yanis; Techno-Feudalism

O’Brien & Abdelhadi; Everything for Everyone

El Akkad, Omar; One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Horne, Gerald; The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave resistance and the origins of the United States of America

ISBN: ‎ 978-1479806898

Magoon, Kekla; Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People

ISBN: 978-1-5362-1418-5

Working Class History (Editors of); Working Class History: Everyday acts of resistance and rebellion

ISBN: 978-1-62963-823-2

Sciver, Buhle, Max; Eugene V. Debs: A graphic biography

ISBN: 978-1-78663-687-4

Tyler, McClinton; Black Coal & Red Bandanas: An illustrated history of the West Virginia mine wars

ISBN: 979-8-88744-059-0

Clay, Shannon; We Go Where They Go: The story of anti-racist action

ISBN: ‎978-1629639727

Davis, Angela; Women, Race & Class

ISBN: ‎978-0394713519

Bevins, Vincent; The Jakarta Method: Washington’s anticommunist crusade and the mass murder program that shaped our world

ISBN: 978–1-5417-2400-6

Smith, David Michael; Endless Holocausts: Mass death in the history of the United States Empire

ISBN: 978-1-58367-9890

Turse, Nick; Kill Anything That Moves: The real American war in Vietnam

ISBN: ‎978-1250045065

Lynd, Grubacic; Wobblies & Zapatistas: Conversations on anarchism, Marxism, and radical history

ISBN: 978-1-60486-041-2

Ellsberg, Daniel; The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a nuclear war planner

ISBN: 978-1-40888-928-2

Johnson, Chalmers; Nemesis: The last days of the American republic

ISBN: 978-0-8050-8728-4

Risen, James; Pay Any Price: Greed, power, and endless war

ISBN: 978-0544570351

Ackerman, Spencer; Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 era destabilized America and produced Trump

ISBN: 9781984879790

Snowden, Edward; Permanent Record

ISBN: 978-1250772909

Parenti, Michael; Blackshirts & Reds: Rational fascism & the overthrow of communism

ISBN: 0-87286-329-8

Parenti, Michael; Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti reader

ISBN: 978-0-87286-482-5

Hickel, Jason; Less is More: How degrowth will save the world

ISBN: ‎978-1786091215

Saito, Kohei; Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the idea of degrowth communism

ISBN: 978-1-009-36618-2

Harvey, David; A Brief History of Neoliberalism

ISBN: 978-0199283279

Plehwe, Slobodian, Mirowski; Nine Lives of Neoliberalism

ISBN: 978-1-78873-253-6

Graeber, David; Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

ISBN: 978-1-5011-4331-1

Sahr, Aaron; Keystroke Capitalism: How banks create money for the few

ISBN: 978-1-83976-119-5

Harrington, Brooke; Offshore: Stealth wealth and the new colonialism

ISBN: ‎978-1324110323

Kennard, Matt; The Racket: A rogue reporter vs. the American empire

ISBN: 978-1-3504-2271-1

Malleson, Tom; Against Inequality: The practical and ethical case for abolishing the superrich

ISBN: 978-0-19-767040-8

Hickel, Jason; The Divide: A brief guide to global inequality and its solutions

ISBN: ‎978-1786090034

Thrasher, Steven W.; The Viral Underclass: The human toll when inequality and disease collide

ISBN: 978-1250796646

Desmond, Matthew; Poverty, By America

ISBN:‎ 978-0593239933

Karakatsanis, Alec; Usual Cruelty: The complicity of lawyers in the criminal injustice system

ISBN: 978-1620975275

ISBN (paperback, to be released Jan 14): 978-1620979143

Bano, Nick; Against Landlords: How to solve the housing crisis

ISBN: 978-1-80429-387-4

Anderson, Batarseh, El Gazzar; Visualizing Palestine: A chronicle of colonialism and the struggle for liberation

ISBN: 9798888902509

Sacco, Joe; Footnotes in Gaza

ISBN: 978-0805092776

Bevins, Vincent; If We Burn: The mass protest decade and the missing revolution

ISBN: 978-1541788978

Burns, Joe; Class Struggle Unionism

ISBN: 978-1-64259-584-0

Seymour, Richard; Disaster Nationalism: The downfall of liberal civilization

ISBN: ‎978-1804294253

Gelderloos, Peter; The Failure of Nonviolence

ISBN: 978-1-948501-13-2

Smucker, Jonathan Matthew; Hegemony How-to: A roadmap for radicals

ISBN: 978-1-84935-254-3

Aronowitz, Stanley; The Death and Life of American Labor

ISBN: 978-1-78478-300-6

Jaffe, Sarah; Work Won’t Love You Back: How devotion to our jobs keeps us exploited, exhausted, and alone

ISBN: ‎978-1568589374

Hayes, Kaba; Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the revolution of reciprocal care

ISBN: 978-1-64259-827-8

Ford, Derek; Teaching the Actuality of Revolution: Aesthetics, Unlearning, and the Sensations of Struggle

ISBN: 978-1088071694

Srnicek, Williams; Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a world without work

ISBN: 978-1-78478-622-9

Ghodsee, Kristen R.; Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 years of wild experiments can teach us about the good life

ISBN: 978-1982190224

Schneier, Bruce; A Hacker’s Mind: How the powerful bend society’s rules, and how to bend them back

ISBN: 978-1324074533

Burkeman, Oliver; Four Thousand Weeks: Time management for mortals

ISBN: 978-1250849359

Hodgkinson, Tom; The Freedom Manifesto

ISBN: 978-0060823221