Reading with Comrades discussion

Hey y'all! My local organizing group just launched our Bookshop.org affiliate page as part of our political education working group! For those who aren't familiar, Bookshop.org is a site that works with indie bookstores and socializes its profits across all its partners. They also offer "affiliate stores" - where you can curate recommended reads by theme ("shelves") and if someone uses your link, you get 10% of the revenue. I thought this would be a great way for our little nonprofit to both spread socialist literacy and make a little extra money to support our mutual aid and other work.

So if you like to buy physical copies of books and want to support indie bookstores, check it out! I'd also love to hear yall's recs and add them to the shop. And if you're in the Atlanta area and interested in checking out Mosaic (or not in ATL and want to attend one of our virtual political education workshops), I'm happy to answer any questions!

https://bookshop.org/shop/MosaicAtlanta

I would add Orientalism and some more Marx (Capital, 18th Brumaire and the Value, Price and Profit/Wage Labor and Capital immediately come to mind). Engels (Socialism, Utopian and Scientific and Principles of Communism would be a start).

Savage War of Peace, A Peace to End All Peace, King Leopold's Ghost, The SS Dirlewanger Brigade, The Kaiser's Holocaust and Anatomy of Fascism aren't directly Leftist books but I think they're relevant reading for any Leftist

I didn't see any Graeber or Chomsky which is fine if you didn't add them for ideological reasons but I'd consider them relevant for sure.

(I have a LOT more to recommend on Fascism, WW2 and the Holocaust but tbh if you add all my favorite stuff we'd end up with a list of great history books with some leftist political thought instead of the opposite)

i definitely want to add graeber, i’ve just been trying to figure out which shelf to use because his work is so expansive! i don’t love chomsky but i definitely see the value in ‘manufacturing consent.’

thank you so much for all the recommendations!

i’m down to create a history shelf as well but i’d prefer it not to be eurocentric.

Every history book I listed except the Dirlewanger book (which is a goddamn masterpiece btw) is about colonialism/imperialism/wars of liberation tho.

I saw you listed Open Veins and Late Victorian Holocausts so I didn't mention them but they're great books so kudos for that.

gotcha! i was referring to your last paragraph abt WW2 :) meaning that i’d love to include history texts about that time but preferably those from third world perspectives rather than europe! apologies if i offended.