Reading List
[PDF version]

Below is a list of excellent books that are recommended for those wishing to better their understanding of democratic socialist theory, history, political strategy and values. Some of titles below are classics and others are more contemporary works. The list is not intended as a complete bibliography, nor are all the books entirely consistent with our politics. There are a number of issues, authors, and perspectives that are not adequately covered in this list. Democratic socialists are in favor of vigorous debate and respect a diversity of opinions. We welcome your suggestions for titles to add to this list or critiques of those already referenced below.


INTRODUCTIONS TO SOCIALISM:
Socialism Unbound, Stephen Eric Bronner
Socialism, Michael Harrington
Socialism Past and Future, Michael Harrington
Essential Works of Socialism, Irving Howe, ed.
The Long Detour: the History and Future of the American Left, James Weinstein

CONTEMPORARY SOCIALIST THOUGHT:
Renewing Socialism: Democracy, Strategy, and Imagination, Leo Panitch
Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age, Russell Jacoby
After Capitalism, David Schweickart
Whose Millennium? Theirs or Ours, Daniel Singer

CLASSICAL SOCIALIST THOUGHT:
Karl Marx: Selected Writings
The Rosa Luxemburg Reader
The Antonio Gramsci Reader
Liberal Socialism, Carlo Roselli
Leon Trotsky, Irving Howe

THE CLASS STRUGGLE:
The Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson
Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich
The Working Class Majority, Michael Zweig

POLITICS, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS & THE STATE:
Marxism and Politics, Ralph Miliband
Poor People's Movements: How They Succeed, Why They Fail, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward
Fascism: Theory and Practice, Dave Renton

AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY & POLITICS:
Black Reconstruction, W.E.B. DuBois
The Black Jacobins, C.L.R. James
The Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy
I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr., Michael Eric Dyson
How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, Manning Marable
Race Matters, Cornel West

SOCIALIST FEMINISM:
The Socialist Feminist Project: A Contemporary Reader in Theory and Politics, Nancy Holmstrom, ed.
Women, Class & the Feminist Imagination: A Socialist-Feminist Reader, Ilene Philipson & Karen Hansen, eds.

SOCIALISM & RELIGION:
The Socialist Decision, Paul Tillich
Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity, Cornel West
Liberation Theology, Phillip Berryman
Liberation Theology and Its Critics, Arthur F. McGovern
These Holy Sparks: The Rebirth of the Jewish People, Arthur Waskow
The Politics at God's Funeral, Michael Harrington
Marxism and the Muslim World, Maxime Rodinson
 
AMERICAN SOCIALISM:
E.V. Debs, A Biography (originally published as The Bending Cross), Ray Ginger
Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist, Nick Salvatore
The Other American: A Biography of Michael Harrington, Maurice Isserman
California Red: A Life in the American Communist Party, Dorothy Healey
Marxism in the United States: Remapping the History of the American Left, Paul Buhle
World of Our Fathers, Irving Howe

AMERICAN WORKING CLASS HISTORY:
We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World, Melvyn Dubofsky
Rebels, Reformers and Racketeers: How Insurgents Transformed the Labor Movement, Herman Benson
State of the Union: A Century of American Labor, Nelson Lichtenstein
The Fall of the House of Labor, David Montgomery
Homestead, William Serrin

SOCIALISM & ECOLOGY:
The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment, John Bellamy Foster
Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology, André Gorz
Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism, James O'Connor
Eco-Socialism: From Deep Ecology to Social Justice, David Pepper

EUROPEAN SOCIALISM:
After Progress: European Socialism and American Social Reform in the 20th Century, Norman Birnbaum
Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000, Geoff Eley
One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century, Donald Sassoon

CAPITALIST GLOBALIZATION:
Panic Rules!: Everything You Need to Know About the Global Economy, Robin Hahnel
The Amoral Elephant: Globalization and the Struggle for Social Justice in the 21st Century, William K. Tabb
The Economics of Global Turbulence, Robert Brenner

MODERN IMPERIALISM:
Empire of Capital, Ellen Meiksins Wood
The New Imperialism, David Harvey
How America Lost Iraq, Aaron Glatz

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION & THE SOVIET EXPERIENCE:
The Bolsheviks Come to Power, Alexander Rabinowitch
Workers' Control and Socialist Democracy: The Soviet Experience, Carmen Sirianni
Before Stalinism, Samuel Farber
History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky
The Stalinist Legacy: Its Impact on 20th-Century World Politics, Tariq Ali, ed.

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