Booklist

We are systematically robbed of our past - by the media and the education system. The anti-Vietnam war movement, the Russian revolution, the ideas of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, just to name a few examples, are all distorted and twisted because knowing this history would enable us to effectively challenge the system and the status quo today. We are also denied any kind of systematic framework that can explain how the problems that we face today - war, hunger, poverty, unemployment, environmental destruction - are all interrelated. That's why it's important to read, and I have put together a long list of books that I think are useful to read to aid us in the project of changing the world.

the Russian Revolution

• Ten Days That Shook the World by John Reed (there's a reason it's up here above everything else!)
• the Bolsheviks Come to Power by Alexander Rabinowitch
• History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky
• Lessons of October by Leon Trotsky
• My Life by Leon Trotsky
• Stalin: an Appraisal of the Man and His Influence by Leon Trotsky
• Lenin and the Revolutionary Party (hard to find but really excellent!) by Paul LeBlanc
• Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma by A.Y. Badayev
• Lenin, vol 1: Building the Party by Tony Cliff
• Lenin, vol 2: All Power to the Soviets by Tony Cliff
• Lenin, vol 3: the Revolution Besieged by Tony Cliff
• Trotsky, vol 1: Towards October by Tony Cliff
• Trotsky, vol 2: the Sword of the Revolution by Tony Cliff
• Trotsky, vol 3: Fighting the Rising Stalinist Bureaucracy by Tony Cliff
• Trotsky, vol 4: the Darker the Night, the Brighter the Star by Tony Cliff
• Russia - How the Revolution Was Lost by Chris Harman
• the Revenge of History by Alex Callinicos
• the Tragedy of Bukharin by Donny Gluckstein
• Year One of the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge
• the Russian Revolution by N. Sukhanov
• Kronstadt and Petrograd in 1917 by Raskolnikov
• Notes of a Red Guard by Eduard Dune

U.S. Workers' History

• Subterranean Fire: a History of Working Class Radicalism in the United States by Sharon Smith
• From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend by Priscilla Murolo and A.B. Chitty
• A People's History of the United States 1492-Present by Howard Zinn
• Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
• Shaking the World: the Revolutionary Journalism of John Reed
• Eugene Debs Speaks available from Pathfinder
• the Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood
• the Autobiography of Mother Jones
• Rebel Girl, the autobiography of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
• Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs
• Teamster Power by Farrell Dobbs
• Teamster Politics by Farrell Dobbs
• Teamster Bureaucracy by Farrell Dobbs
• Labor's Giant Step by Art Preis
• Not Automatic: Women and the Left in the Forging of the Auto Workers' Union by Sold Sollinger and Genora Johnson Dollinger
• the Industrial Workers of the World by James Cannon
• The Autobiography of Malcom X as told to Alex Haley
• a People's History of the Vietnam War by Jonathan Neale
• Soldiers in Revolt by David Cortright
• Flower of the Dragon by Richard Boyle
• Out Now: a Participant's Account of the American Movemement Against the Vietnam War by Fred Halstead
• the War Within by Tom Wells
• Detroit: I Do Mind Dying by Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin
• Civil Rights in Peril edited by Elaine Hagopian

International Workers' History

• A People's History of the World by Chris Harman
• Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough by August Nimitz
• The Civil War in France by Karl Marx
• 1905 by Leon Trotsky
• the Clash of Fundamentalisms by Tariq Ali
• the Politics of James Connolly by Kiernan Allen
• the Comintern by Duncan Hallas
• The Western Soviets: Workers' Councils vs Parliament 1915-1921 by Donny Gluckstein
• the Lost Revolution: Germany 1918-1923 by Chris Harman
• Proletarian Order: factory councils, Gramsci, and the Origins of Italian Communism by Gwyn A. Williams
• the Third International After Lenin
• the Nazis, Capitalism, and the Working Class by Donny Gluckstein
• German fascism: what it is and how to fight it by Leon Trotsky
• June '36 - Class Struggle and the Popular Front in France by Jaques Danos and Marcel Gibelin
• the Spanish Revolution, 1931-1939 by Leon Trotsky Click here for a basic political outline of what Trotsky thought about the subject
• Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
• the Ghetto Fights by Marek Edelman
• Japan at War: an Oral History by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook
• the Hidden History of Zionism
• Israel: a Colonial-Settler State? by Maxime Rodinson
• a World to Win, the Life of a Revolutionary by Tony Cliff
• the Mandate of Heaven: Marx and Mao in Modern China by Nigel Harris
• China - Whose Revolution? by Charile Hore
• Class Struggles in Eastern Europe/Bureaucracy and Revolution by Chris Harman
• the Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq by Hanna Batatu
• the Fire Last Time: 1968 and After by Chris Harman
• Revolutionary Rehearsals edited by Colin Barker
• Weavers of the Revolution by Peter Winn
• Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Iran by Phil Marshall
• Nicaragua: What Went Wrong? by Mike Gonzalez
• South Africa: Between Reform and Revolution by Alex Callinicos
• the Road to Tiananmen Square by Charlie Hore
• Between Apartheid and Capitalism - Conversations With South African Socialists edited by Alex Callinicos

U.S. Foreign Policy

• the Forging of the American Empire by Sidney Lens
• Bush in Babylon by Tariq Ali
• Jarhead: a Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles by Anthony Swofford
• American Empire by Andrew Bacevich
• Hideous Dream: a Soldier's Memoir of the U.S. Invasion of Haiti by Stan Goff
• Vietnam Wars by Marilyn R. Young
• Giap by Peter Macdonald
• Deterring Democracy by Noam Chomsky
• Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman
• Necessary Illusions by Noam Chomsky
• Killing Hope: A History of U.S. and C.I.A. Military Intervention Since WWII by William Blum

Marxist Theory

• Marx for Beginners by Ruis
• Lenin for Beginners by A & Z
• Trotsky for Beginners by Tariq Ali and Phil Evans
• How Marxism Works by Chris Harman
• the Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx by Alex Callinicos
• The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
• the German Ideology
• Value, Price and Profit by Karl Marx
• Critique of the Gotha Programme by Karl Marx
• Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right by Karl Marx
• Anti-Duhring by Frederick Engels
• Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Frederick Engels
• the Origin of Family, Private Property and the State by Frederick Engels
• Imperialism and World Economy by Nikolai Bukharin
• State and Revolution by V.I. Lenin
• Imperialism - the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin
• "Left Wing" Communism - a Childhood Disease by V.I Lenin
• What is to be Done? by V.I. Lenin
• the First Five Years of the Communist International, volumes 1 and 2 by Leon Trotsky
• Literature and Revolution
• Permanent Revolution (and Results and Prospects) by Leon Trotsky
• Their Morals and Ours
• Reform or Revolution? by Rosa Luxemburg
• the Mass Strike by Rosa Luxemburg
• the Two Souls of Socialism by Hal Draper
• the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" From Marx to Lenin by Hal Draper
• State Capitalism in Russia by Tony Cliff
• Marxism and the Collectivization of Agriculture
• Deflected Permanent Revolution by Tony Cliff
• Trotskyism After Trotsky by Tony Cliff
• Black Liberation and Socialism by Ahmed Shawki
• Women and Socialism by Sharon Smith
• Party and Class by Chris Harman
• Economics of the Madhouse by Chris Harman
• Race and Class by Alex Callinicos
• Towards a Revolutionary Socialist Party by Duncan Hallas
• Trotsky’s Marxism by Duncan Hallas
• Marxism and the Party by John Molyneux
• Leon Trotsky's Theory of Revolution by John Molyneux
• the Algebra of Revolution by John Rees
• Arguments for Revolutionary Socialism by John Molyneux
• Marxism and the Trade Union Struggle - the General Strike of 1926 by Tony Cliff and Donny Gluckstein
• Marxism and the New Imperialism by Alex Callinicos, John Rees, Chris Harman, and Mike Haynes
• Open Letter to the Party by Jacek Kuron and Karol Modzeleweski
• Walls and Bars: Prisons and Prison Life in the "Land of the Free" by Eugene Debs
• a Question of Class by Lindsey German
• the Working Class Majority by Michael Zweig

the Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould
• Full House by Stephen Jay Gould
• Marx's Ecology by John Bellamy Foster
• Silent Spring by Rachel Carlson

Fiction

• 1984 by George Orwell
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• All Quiet on the Western Front
• Native Son by Richard Wright
• Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• A Brave New World (and a Brave New World Revisited) by Aldous Huxley
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
• Dune (and all its sequels) by Frank Herbert
• Anything by Edgar Allen Poe