What Book Are You Currently Reading?

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Just finished up Sam Pizzigati's excellent The Rich Don't Always Win. Highly recommend it. It's like Zinn's People's History but less boring and more for a general audience. A lot of surprising stuff in it, too. I was kind of surprised to learn that FDR actually proposed capping income during WWII, taking another page from Huey Long's book. And that progressives were so successful during the Great Depression and World War II.

And now I'm about halfway through Josh Freeman's American Empire, which is good, but not as good as the book I just finished. It covers 1945 to 2000 and the changes in American society within and abroad. I just hit the Nixon administration, so I've got a ways to go. It's mind-blowing how much society was democratized by the New Deal, the Great Society, and the Civil Rights Revolution. Simply mind-blowing, and kind of awesome. Gives me hope for the future of the progressive movement in this country, while also providing a cautionary tale on how not to let things get too out of hand and allow reaction to creep in.

After that, I've got a lot of things I'm probably going to try and read in the next few weeks. The Noir Forties just came in the mail and my girlfriend lent me Bob Dylan's autobiography, which I kind of want to read before we see him in concert next month. Oh, and I finally got around to buying Grapes of Wrath, Main Street, and Babbitt. No idea where to begin there. Any suggestions?

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Just finished Joshua Freeman's American Empire, about to the third chapter of Richard Lingeman's The Noir Forties.

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Socialism: Past and Future by Michael Harrington.

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Marx: A Brief Insight by Peter Singer.

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Just finished up:



Just started:



Just ordered:

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Finally finished Marx's Ecology by J.B. Foster, which was a really good read, although it was a bit hard to get into at first. Rebuts a lot of the common mischaracterizations and accusations leveled at Marxist thought so far as ecology and the environment are concerned, and connects the dots between ancient and early modern thinkers (and Marx) to build a coherent, materialist view of ecological development and the interaction between human beings and their environment.

What I'm working on now:


What I'm waiting for in the mail:

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Finished a few days ago:



Finishing up now:



Next up:

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Reading in anticipation of a talk I'm attending on Marxism and Anarchism this weekend.

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literally one thousand pages

rip tnf

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literally one thousand pages

rip tnf

Have you read Trotsky's memories? I've recently finished it. Trosky was quite good with a pen.

I have not, but I have to concur. As far as Marxist writers go, Trotsky was probably the most readable, which probably stems from his stint (IIRC) as a journalist. After that, I'd say the next most readable is Engels, followed by Lenin, and Marx at the absolute bottom, lol. Stalin is accessible, but vapid and has literally no grasp of theory, so I won't dignify him with a ranking. (Although that might be my Trotskyite prejudices shining through )

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Labor's Giant Step: The First Twenty Years of the CIO by Art Preis

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I'm still scratching my head about the last Zizek volume I read, but I decided to read another one, because even though the last one was kind of confused rambling, I still feel like I got something (though I'm not sure what) out of the last one.

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I'll definitely look into it. At the same time, I would recommend Trotsky's Hue and Cry over Krondstadt, which explains that the rebellion was not a move to save the revolution from Bolshevik overreach, but actually a reactionary peasant uprising backed by the White Army.

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Started this one yesterday, after finishing Michael Parenti's Make Believe Media, which was pretty good. So far, this one is a pretty phenomenal work, breaking down the usual narrative of World War II as the sole battle between the Axis and the Allies and concentrating on the contradictions within each of the major powers and the ways that minor powers and movements within occupied territories responded to occupation and fought fascism in their own way. The author proposes that World War II was really two conflicts that intersected with one another, an imperialist war fought for imperialist aims (Allies v. Axis) and a 'people's war' fought by ordinary people against fascism who were seeking more than just a return to the 1930s and business as usual after the destruction of the Axis.