The Notorious RGB: Herstory
this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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In the US, "Black Reconstruction in America" by W.E.B. Dubois - detailing the revolutionary nature of post-civil war reconstruction that was squashed first by Lincoln then absolutely destroyed by Johnson.
I'm also seeking recommendations for histories of the indigenous struggle in North America!
An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a good all around history.
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen and Prison Writings: My Life is a Sun Dance by the man himself are both about Leonard Peltier
Red Skin, White Masks talks about recognition politics and the history of both the liberal and radical sects of indigenous organizing mostly in Canada
I haven't read Like the Sound of a Drum by Peter Kulchyski but I've had it recommended as well and it's on my (ever increasing) list
Parenti’s Assassination of Julius Caesar isn’t really a history but it does provide a primer on how class affects the telling of history.
If you're in the US, probably Zinn's A People's History
10 Days that shook the World is a great, concrete, on the ground account of the days surrounding the October revolution in Russia when the bolsheviks seized power, I think it's very important to read
Eric Hobsbawm 4-volume series for sure: The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, The Age of Empire, and The Age of Extremes.
Very dense though, good luck.
i don't think there are any. you ought to know the history of where you live & work, probably the country at large? who knows if you've had a marxist writer do that for you though?
theory needs to be/should be sufficient for you to be able interpret an account of events, even biased, if it isn't outright lying.
I strongly disagree with this. Studying historical revolutions is as important if not more than theory. Theory only is how you get ultras.
i don't think there's an essential stable of history books for everyone. if you're uruguayan the Tupamaros are pretty relevant, elsewhere substantially less. what i recommend and talk to people about around where i live is definitely not the same as what's important to someone in pakistan or angola.
i wouldn't want to discourage anybody from taking an interest or lessons from far afield, but if we're approaching this from what someone absolutely NEEDS to know, it's got to be local first.
That's probably gonna require an understanding of US foreign policy, and that of other colonial powers, at some point though.
The origin of capitalism by Meiksins Wood
The Origins of the Modern World is a solid materialist account of how Europe came to be the dominant global power and the profit-driven mass violence that led to the rise of modern capitalism.
I've been reading The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber, and David Wengrow. While I haven't finished it yet, it's an excellent analysis of how Human societies actually formed based on anthropological and archeological evidence.
Basically everything that Sapiens should have been, and they call out the lib version of Human history regularly.
Really upset that further books will likely never develop due to the death of Graeber.