10 Books Every Student Should Read
Must-read Verso classics for all students.
Whether you’re just starting out, or you’ve been a lifelong student, these are books you need to read to build an understanding of how capitalism began, how it shaped every facet of our lives, and how we fight back.
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Written at the birth of post-war consumerism, Critique was an inspiration for the 1968 student revolution in France.
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Capitalism is not a natural and inevitable consequence of human nature, nor simply an extension of age-old practices of trade and commerce. It is a late and localized product of very specific historical conditions, which required great transformations in social relations and in the relationship between humans and nature.
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Rodney makes the unflinching case that African “mal-development” is not a natural feature of geography, but a direct product of imperial extraction from the continent, a practice that continues up into the present.
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An intense and lively debate on literature and art between thinkers who became some of the great figures of twentieth-century philosophy and literature.
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The most influential book on the origins of nationalism, filling the vacuum that previously existed in the traditions of Western thought.
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Abolition Geography draws on the lessons of grassroots organizing and internationalist imaginaries to articulate a process of organized abandonment of people and environments deemed surplus to requirement.
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The most comprehensive and thorough analysis of the prison system of the United States.
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Fraser charts the decline in feminism's utopian energies during the rise of neoliberalism and calls for a reinvigorated feminist radicalism.
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Mike Davis's survey of the history of the American bourgeois democratic revolution that outlines the prospects for progressive politics in the United States.
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A masterpiece of historical sociology that examines the forces that have shaped and are now poised to undermine America’s world dominance.
