Books

Essential reading

Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance
Nick Estes
In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century. Water Protectors knew this battle for native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even […]
The Democracy Fix
Caroline Fredrickson
In The Democracy Fix, the president of the American Constitution Society argues for progressives to focus on winning by learning from the Right that policy follows power, not the other way around. Caroline Fredrickson points to judicial elections, state power, election law and other policy areas that change the rules of the game. Fredrickson shows […]
Can the Working Class Change the World?
Michael Yates
Spoiler alert: Michael Yates not only answers his question with a resounding “Yes,” but insists that the working class must change the world. Our very survival as a people and a planet depend on it. What makes this book invaluable, however, is not its grand conclusion but Yates’s clear-eyed, global analysis of capitalism (historically and in […]
The Indispensable Zinn: The Essential Writings of the “People’s Historian”
Howard Zinn
When the historian Howard Zinn died in early 2010, millions mourned the loss of one of our foremost intellectual and political guides: a historian, activist, and truth-teller who, in the words of Bob Herbert, “peel[ed] back the rosy veneer of much of American history.” Designed to highlight Zinn’s most important writings, The Indispensable Zinn includes excerpts from […]
A People’s History of the United States, 1492-Present
Howard Zinn
This 729-page masterwork by the legendary historian is a must-have for your library and the perfect gift. Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People’s History of the United States tells America’s story from the point of view of – and in the words of – women, factory workers, […]
Democracy in Chains
Nancy MacLean
Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America exposes how libertarian notions and right-wing political power in the US came to define speech as money and corporations as people, gerrymander key electoral maps, and stiff-arm the progressive changes that most Americans clamor for.
The Death of Democracy
Benjamin Hett
Benjamin Hett chronicles the demise of constitutional rule in Germany from 1930-1934 and what enabled Nazism. The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic resonates with contemporary corollaries without ever having to identify them. The work serves as an important reminder of the fragility of democracy.
Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy
Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian
Global Discontents is a compelling new set of interviews with Noam Chomsky, who identifies the “dry kindling” of discontent around the world that could soon catch fire. In wide-ranging interviews with David Barsamian, his longtime interlocutor, Noam Chomsky asks us to consider “the world we are leaving to our grandchildren”: one imperiled by the escalation […]
Is Inequality in America Irreversible?
Chuck Collins
We are living in a time of extreme inequality: America’s three richest people now own as much wealth as the bottom half of the population. Although most accept that this is grotesque, many politicians accept it as irreversible. In this book, leading US researcher and activist Chuck Collins succinctly diagnoses the drivers of rampant inequality, […]
Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said
Edward Said, David Barsamian
David Barsamian interviews Edward Said. Edward W. Said discusses the importance and centrality of popular resistance in the framework of culture, history, and struggle. He reveals his thoughts on the war on terrorism and the invasion of Afghanistan. On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he lays out a compelling vision for a secular, democratic future in the Middle […]
The Pen and the Sword: Conversations with Edward Said
Edward Said
David Barsamian interviews Edward Said. Introduction by Eqbal Ahmad. With a new preface by Nubar Hovsepian. Haymarket Books, March 2010; 180 pages. Gathered here are five wide-ranging interviews with the internationally renowned Palestinian scholar and critic Edward Said (1935-2003). In conversation with David Barsamian, director of Alternative Radio, these interviews cover a broad range of […]
How to Read a Protest: The Art of Organizing and Resistance
L.A. Kauffman
By L.A. Kauffman 152 pages When millions of people took to the streets for the 2017 Women’s Marches, there was an unmistakable air of uprising, a sense that these marches were launching a powerful new movement to resist a dangerous presidency. But the work that protests do often can’t be seen in the moment. It […]

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