As we near the 2024 Presidential Election and pass the one-year mark of Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, many feel disillusioned about the future. Community organizing and education will be crucial to avoiding the many crises we face. Here is a list of introductory books for some of the critical issues of our time. This includes general subjects, big-name intellectuals, and revelatory new histories that can inspire us.
History
Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States has long been the most influential history of the United States from a left-wing perspective. Despite some shortcomings, it is a wonderful place to start since chapters are readable as standalone essays.
Power
Noam Chomsky’s Understanding Power – a collection of his seminars, teach-ins, and Q&A sessions – is a great introduction to the foremost intellectual on the American Left for over sixty years. Also consider Manufacturing Consent, one of his most famous works on media and propaganda.
Settler Colonialism
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States is a history of the United States as a settler colonial project. (Free copies are currently available at Kellogg Library.) Her work holds equally true revelations for the genocide in Gaza and is now available as a graphic history adaptation. For an introduction to the politics of modern-day Palestine and Israel, I would recommend On Palestine and Ten Myths About Israel by renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé.
Capitalism
Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism argues that unfettered capitalism took hold of the world economy by force and the exploitation of disasters. It remains one of the most influential books on neoliberalism and globalization. A great case study of “disaster capitalism” is Jake Johnston’s recent book, Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti.
Organizing
Legendary organizer Marshall Ganz’s new, long-awaited book People, Power, Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal has already become a vital resource for organizers of all sorts. In his book, Ganz distills decades of experience from the civil-rights movement, organized labor, community organizing, political campaigns, academia, and more. For those specifically interested in labor organizing, Unite and Win: The Workplace Organizer’s Handbook is a great pamphlet.
Climate Crisis
Jason Hickel’s Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World and Kohei Saito’s Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto are excellent introductions to how the climate crisis must be anti-capitalist and anti-neocolonialist. Unless the Global North stops pursuing unlimited economic growth at the expense of the Global South, our planet and its inhabitants will continue to suffer. For a deeper look at how the climate crisis is already here, see The Heat Will Kill You First by Jeff Goodell.
Borders
As its title suggests, Harsha Walia’s Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism uses a transnational perspective to systemically analyze the origins of border violence. For a solid reference work with handy arguments for border abolition, see The Case for Open Borders by John Washington. Also see Silky Shah’s Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition for how border abolition is tied to prison abolition.
Media
Victor Pickard’s Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society is an urgent wake-up call to the current state of journalism and local news, which is collapsing due to privatization, corporate consolidation, and unregulated tech giants. In other words, capitalism is killing journalism as we know it.
Protest
Vincent Bevins’ If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution analyzes the history and failures of the non-hierarchical, spontaneous protests that gripped the world in the 2010s. Bevins’ critique may be hard for some to accept, but it is crucial to reckon with if we want to build real, sustainable change in the future.
Futures Beyond Capitalism
David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity shatters assumptions about human nature and our species’ transition to settled societies. Graeber and Wengrow argue that the development of advanced agriculture is not wholly responsible for today’s extreme inequality. They present recent scholarship that demonstrates how many ancient societies maintained fluid, non-hierarchical societies. This book is an inspiring work for imagining potential futures beyond capitalism.
Race, Gender, and Sexuality
Kit Heyam’s Before We Were Trans is a monumental new global history of gender. As trans people continue to come under attack, Heyam’s history shows how people from various cultures have long transcended the gender binary.
Lastly, pretty much anything by Angela Davis is bound to open your mind. She is a leading voice on race, gender, socialism, feminism, and prison abolition.
What books would you add to this list? Drop your suggestions in the comments section below.
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