READING LIST
The theme of all my books can be summed up in a single word: equity.
Equity is the understanding that none of us begins life from the same place, and in order to move toward a more fair and balanced world, we must acknowledge this. The below reading list is derived from my experience researching disability, gender, labor, race, and conflict—all of which are used to keep us from living more equitable lives. What I have discovered is that history is full of smart and empathetic thinkers, activists, writers, and organizers working hard toward a more inclusive and kinder world.
Read their work, and you won’t be able to stop yourself from believing we can make it happen.
Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America by Louis Adamic (1931)
Adamic writes about the violence between labor and capital back in the day when the violence was less cracked heads and more out and out warfare. Adamic died by violence. In 1954, he was found shot to death in a burning farmhouse.
Cry From The Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and the New Deal by Donald H. Grubbs (1971)
The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America by Lawrence Goldwyn (1978)
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn (1980) - What history looks like to regular people experiencing it instead of from the viewpoint of those running it.
Women, Race, & Class by Angela Y. Davis (1981) - A book that helps clean up the mess in your brain made by society.
The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich (1984) - No stone left unturned. You walk away getting it.
Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950 by Vicki L. Ruiz (1987)
Labor Rights are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America by Zaragoza Vargas (2005) - This is a full on exhaustive history on 20th century Mexican American labor and a very cool look at the success of interracial unionism. Vargas goes deep, but hang in there and you get an education from an author who is fearless when it comes to facing complexity to tell his story.
Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask by Anton Treuer (2012)
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2014)
A Rhetoric of Remnants, Idiots, Half-Wits, and Other State-Sponsored Inventions by Zosha Stuckey (2014) - Rhetoric is a fancy word for using language to do something, like persuade or entice you. Stuckey investigates how language is used to “other” disabled people, making it easier to deny empathy and exclude us from society. This is not any easy read, but super-do-duper interesting if you love language.
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer (2016) - Not for those with high blood pressure because this book seriously pisses you off.
No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane F. McAlevey (2016)
Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto by Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser (2019) – Forget breaking a glass ceiling for a few and then waiting for opportunity to trickle down, these authors present a case to bettering the world for the many.
Wake: The Hidden History of Women-led Slave Revolts by Rebecca Hall (2021)
We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba (2021) - Kaba doesn’t offer solutions to bettering our present carceral system, but instead asks us to step back and imagine the world we want. There is much needed rest and rejuvenation in imagining…and in this book.
Work Without the Worker: Labour in the Age of Platform Capitalism by Phil Jones (2021)
Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People by Kekla Magoon (2021)
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein (2023) - This book is for anyone attempting to understand the historical moment in which we are living.
Classics:
Wage-Labor and Capital: Value, Price, and Profit - Karl Marx (1849) - Take this on before Capital. Marx wrote it for the working class.
Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase Want with Increase of Wealth by Henry George (1879) - A bestseller in its day, even with this awful title. George’s take on the late 19th century is shockingly familiar to today’s ears: extreme wealth of a few, poverty of the many, with wealth linked tightly to political power.
Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 by W.E.B. Du Bois (1935)
Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria 1919-1920 by Robert K. Murray (1955)
Labor’s Untold Story: The adventure story of the battles, betrayals and victories of American working men and women by Richard Boyer and Herbert M. Morais (1955) - This book makes good on its promise of “adventure.” Fast paced and easy to read.
The Black Panthers Speak edited by Philip S. Foner (1970) - Primary sources are the absolute best. What did the Panthers think, believe, want? Let them seriously just tell you.
Contemporary Reads:
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression by Robin D. G. Kelley (1990)
Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Intellectual Disability in the United States by James W. Trent (1994) - For anyone who has ever had the “ab” attached to them (abnormal) this book is a revelation. Disability during feudal times is incorporated into society. Disability during capitalism becomes a story of control, institutional self-interest, and valuing people based on their ability to economically produce.
Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965 by Annalise Orleck (1995)
Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit by Nelson Lichtenstein (1995)
Labor Rights are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America by Zaragoza Vargas (2005)
Ben Fletcher, The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly by Peter Cole (2007) - Ben Fletcher was a brilliant union organizer and the only Black defendant of the 166 in the 1918 Chicago trial against the IWW. A seriously interesting human, Fletcher arrived two hours late for his indictment due to a train wreck he survives. Once there, he then has to convince the bailiff to let him in…because, racism. Finally figuring out he is who he says he is, Fletcher said, “And then I walked into the courtroom and into the Federal penitentiary’.”
The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez (2016) - A book that lays bear the reality of what happens in the absence of empathy.
Radicals in the Barrio: Magonistas, Socialists, Wobblies, and Communists in the Mexican-American Working Class by Justin Akers Chacón (2018)
Capitalism and Disability by Marta Russell (2019) - Not gonna lie, Marta will crush you. But such an important book.
Keep the Wretches in Order: America’s Biggest Mass Trial, the Rise of the Justice Department, and the Fall of the IWW by Dean Strang (2019)
Working Class History. Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance & Rebellion. Edited Collectively (2020)
The Cost of Free Shipping: Amazon in the Global Economy by Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Ellen Reese (2020) - This takes on the dark side of Amazon’s business model: worker surveillance, the cost to the environment, and the affects the corporation has on democracy.
The Girl Who Dared to Defy: Jane Street and the Rebel Maids of Denver by Jane Botkin Little (2021) – A young Jane organizes the maids of Denver’s elite households and truly gets hit with everything, including the kitchen sink. An amazing story of an amazing human.
G-man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage (2022)
Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality by Lily Geismer (2022)
Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor by Kim Kelly (2022)
On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women’s Epic Fight to Build a Union by Daisy Pitkin (2022) - Solidarity must cross so many lines (race, gender, class) to succeed, all while being pummeled by extreme powerful. Real (and quite beautiful) story of what this looks like in action.