Reading list

Decolonize your bookshelf!

Featuring Walter Rodney, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Priyamvada Gopal, and Angela Davis.

Verso Books23 January 2025

Decolonize your bookshelf!

From the policing crisis to the Black Panthers, to intergenerational stories of resistance and the black radical tradition, these books challenge imperial narratives and offer a history of anti-colonial, anti-racist struggle.

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How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

by Walter Rodney

Foreword by Angela Davis

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is an ambitious masterwork of political economy, detailing the impact of slavery and colonialism on the history of international capitalism. In this classic book, R...
I, Rigoberta Menchú

I, Rigoberta Menchú

by Rigoberta Menchú

Introduction by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray

Edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray

Translated by Ann Wright

Now a global bestseller, the remarkable life of Rigoberta Menchú, a Guatemalan peasant woman, reflects on the experiences common to many Indian communities in Latin America. Menchú suffered gross i...
Abolition Geography

Abolition Geography

by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Gathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore's work from over three decades, Abolition Geography presents her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and organizer, of...
Decolonial Marxism

Decolonial Marxism

by Walter Rodney

Foreword by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Early in life, Walter Rodney became a major revolutionary figure in a dizzying range of locales that traversed the breadth of the Black diaspora: in North America and Europe, in the Caribbean and o...
The Palestine Laboratory

The Palestine Laboratory

by Antony Loewenstein

Winner of the 2023 Walkley non fiction journalism prizeFinalist for the 2023 Moore Prize for Human Rights WritingIsrael's military industrial complex uses the occupied, Palestinian territories as ...
If They Come in the Morning

If They Come in the Morning

by Angela Davis

The trial of Angela Davis is remembered as one of America's most historic political trials, and no one can tell the story better than Davis herself. Opening with a letter from James Baldwin to Ange...
Red Africa

Red Africa

by Kevin Ochieng Okoth

Red Africa makes the case for a revolutionary Black politics inspired by Marxist anticolonial struggles in Africa. Contemporary debates on Black radicalism and decolonisation have lost sight of the...
Imperialism and the National Question

Imperialism and the National Question

by V. I. Lenin

Introduction by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Fired up by the outbreak of the First World War and outraged by the capitulation of most socialist parties to the demands of national bourgeoisies, Lenin sought to understand the deeper roots of th...
European Empires from Conquest to Collapse, 1815-1960

European Empires from Conquest to Collapse, 1815-1960

by Victor G. Kiernan

Foreword by Tariq Ali

European Empires from Conquest to Collapse is a vivid anticolonial reckoning with the history of imperial warfare. Global in scope, it deftly surveys the fighting forces and military engagements of...
The Jewelers of the Ummah

The Jewelers of the Ummah

by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay

Can we return to worlds destroyed by colonial violence? In a series of letters to her father, her great-grandmothers, and her children—and to thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Hannah Arendt—Ariella...
Our History Is the Future

Our History Is the Future

by Nick Estes

In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenou...
Toussaint Louverture

Toussaint Louverture

by C.L.R. James

Illustrated by Sakina Karimjee and Nic Watts

The end of slavery started in what was then San Domingo. In 1791, the enslaved people of the most prized French sugar plantation colony revolted against their masters. For over twelve years, agains...
Someone Else's Empire

Someone Else's Empire

by Tom Stevenson

SOMEONE ELSE’S EMPIRE dispels the myth of a ‘Global Britain’ that punches above its weight in the world. The reality, argues Tom Stevenson, is that Britain lacks even the barest outline of an indep...
The Good Die Young

The Good Die Young

Introduction by Greg Grandin

Edited by Rene Rojas, Bhaskar Sunkara and Jonah Walters

If the American foreign policy establishment is a grand citadel, Henry Kissinger is the specter haunting its dusty hallways. For half a century, he was an omnipresent figure in war rooms and at pre...
Chaos in the Heavens

Chaos in the Heavens

by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and Fabien Locher

Translated by Gregory Elliott

Nothing could seem more contemporary than climate change. Yet, in Chaos in the Heavens, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and Fabien Locher show that we have been thinking about and debating the consequences o...
Making the Revolution Global

Making the Revolution Global

by Theo Williams

Making the Revolution Global shows how black radicals transformed socialist politics in Britain in the years before decolonisation. African and Caribbean activist-intellectuals, such as Amy Ashwood...
The Wages of Whiteness

The Wages of Whiteness

by David R. Roediger

Preface by Priyamvada Gopal

Introduction by Kathleen Cleaver

An enduring history of how race and class came together to mark the course of the antebellum US and our present crisis. Roediger shows that in a nation pledged to independence, but less and less ab...
Crooked Plow

Crooked Plow

by Itamar Vieira Junior

Translated by Johnny Lorenz

Shortlisted for The International Booker Prize 2024'I heard our grandmother asking what we were doing.'"Say something!" she demanded, threatening to tear out our tongues. Little did she know that ...
The Black Atlantic

The Black Atlantic

by Paul Gilroy

In this ground-breaking work, Paul Gilroy proposes that the modern black experience can not be defined solely as African, American, Carribean or British alone, but can only be understand as a Black...
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Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire

Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire

by Deepa Kumar

In this incisive account, leading scholar of Islamophobia Deepa Kumar traces the history of anti-Muslim racism from the early modern era to the “War on Terror.” Importantly, Kumar contends that Isl...
The Assassination of Lumumba

The Assassination of Lumumba

by Ludo De Witte

Translated by Renee Fenby and Ann Wright

The Assassination of Lumumba unravels the appalling mass of lies, hypocrisy and betrayals that have surrounded accounts of the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba—the first prime minister of the ...
Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

by Tariq Ali

The subject of numerous biographies and history books, Winston Churchill has been repeatedly voted as one of the greatest of Englishmen. Even today, Boris Johnson in his failing attempts to be magi...
We're Here Because You Were There

We're Here Because You Were There

by Ian Sanjay Patel

What are the origins of the hostile environment against immigrants in the UK? Patel retells Britain's recent history in an often shocking account of state racism that still resonates today. In a se...
Monumental Lies

Monumental Lies

by Robert Bevan

The past is weaponised in culture wars and cynically edited by those who wish to impose their ideology upon the physical spaces around us. Holocaust deniers use details of the ruins of the gas cha...
Arid Empire

Arid Empire

by Natalie Koch

**Longlisted for the 2023 Cundill History Prize**The iconic deserts of the American southwest could not have been colonized and settled without the help of desert experts from the Middle East. For ...
Gandhi's Assassin

Gandhi's Assassin

by Dhirendra Jha

Dhirendra Jha's deeply researched history places Nathuram Godse's life as the juncture of the dangerous fault lines in contemporary India: the quest for independence and the rise of Hindu nationali...
Imperial Intimacies

Imperial Intimacies

by Hazel V. Carby

‘Where are you from?’ was the question hounding Hazel Carby as a girl in post–World War II London. One of the so-called brown babies of the Windrush generation, born to a Jamaican father and Welsh ...
Britain's Empire

Britain's Empire

by Richard Gott

As the call for a new understanding of our national history gets louder, this book turns the received imperial story of Britain on its head. Britain’s Empire recounts the long overlooked narrative ...
Insurgent Empire

Insurgent Empire

by Priyamvada Gopal

Much has been written on the how colonial subjects took up British and European ideas and turned them against empire when making claims to freedom and self-determination. The possibility of reverse...
Heart Of The Race

Heart Of The Race

by Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe

Introduction by Lola Okolosie

Heart of the Race is a powerful corrective to a version of Britain’s history from which black women have long been excluded. It reclaims and records black women’s place in that history, documenting...
Proletarian China

Proletarian China

Edited by Ivan Franceschini and Christian Sorace

In 2021, the Chinese Communist Party celebrated a century of existence. Since the Party’s humble beginnings in the Marxist groups of the Republican era to its current global ambitions, one thing ha...
In Defence of Barbarism

In Defence of Barbarism

by Louisa Yousfi

Translated by Andy Bliss

Is social integration all it’s cracked up to be? Not in the defiant view of first-time French author Louisa Yousfi, who herself has North African roots. Taking its inspiration from the leading Alge...
The Jewelers of the Ummah

The Jewelers of the Ummah

by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay

Can we return to worlds destroyed by colonial violence? In a series of letters to her father, her great-grandmothers, and her children—and to thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Hannah Arendt—Ariella...
My Country, Africa

My Country, Africa

by Andrée Blouin

Introduction by Adom Getachew and Thomas Meaney

Contributions by Jean Mackellar

Andrée Blouin—once called the most dangerous woman in Africa—played a leading role in the struggles for decolonization that shook the continent in the 1950s and ’60s, advising the postcolonial lead...
This Fiction Called Nigeria

This Fiction Called Nigeria

by Adéwálé Májà-Pearce

In this groundbreaking work, the essayist and critic Adewale Maja-Pearce delivers a mordant verdict on Nigeria’s crisis of democracy. A mosaic of ethnic and religious groups, the most populous coun...
A Child in Palestine

A Child in Palestine

by Naji al-Ali

Introduction by Joe Sacco

A Child in Palestine collects the work of one of the Arab world’s greatest cartoonists, Naji al-Ali, known as ‘the Palestinian Malcolm X’. Discovered in the 1950s, he was revered throughout the reg...
Ten Myths About Israel

Ten Myths About Israel

by Ilan Pappe

In this groundbreaking book, the outspoken and radical Israeli historian Ilan Pappe examines the most contested ideas concerning the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel. This h...
Heart Of The Race

Heart Of The Race

by Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe

Introduction by Lola Okolosie

Heart of the Race is a powerful corrective to a version of Britain’s history from which black women have long been excluded. It reclaims and records black women’s place in that history, documenting...
Algiers, Third World Capital

Algiers, Third World Capital

by Elaine Mokhtefi

Introduction by Jeremy Harding

Mokhtefi (née Klein), a Jewish American from Long Island, has had an exhilarating life. In the 1960s, she served as a press adviser to the National Liberation Front in postwar Algiers, before going...
If They Come in the Morning

If They Come in the Morning

by Angela Davis

The trial of Angela Davis is remembered as one of America's most historic political trials, and no one can tell the story better than Davis herself. Opening with a letter from James Baldwin to Ange...
Uneven Development

Uneven Development

by Neil Smith

Foreword by David Harvey

In Uneven Development, a classic in its field, Neil Smith offers the first full theory of uneven geographical development, entwining theories of space and nature with a critique of capitalism. Feat...
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Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman

Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman

by Michele Wallace

Foreword by Jamilah Lemieux

Originally published in 1978, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman caused a storm of controversy. Michele Wallace blasted the masculine biases of the black politics that emerged from the si...
I, Rigoberta Menchú

I, Rigoberta Menchú

by Rigoberta Menchú

Introduction by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray

Edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray

Translated by Ann Wright

Now a global bestseller, the remarkable life of Rigoberta Menchú, a Guatemalan peasant woman, reflects on the experiences common to many Indian communities in Latin America. Menchú suffered gross i...
Futures of Black Radicalism

Futures of Black Radicalism

Edited by Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin

Black rebellion has returned, with dramatic protests in scores of cities and campuses, bringing with it a renewed engagement with the history of Black radical movements and thought. Here, key schol...
C.L.R. James

C.L.R. James

by Paul Buhle

Afterword by Paul Buhle and Lawrence Ware

Foreword by Robin D.G. Kelley

C.L.R. James was a protean 20th century Marxist intellectual, widely recognized as a pioneering scholar of slave revolt; a leading voice of Pan-Africanism; a peripatetic revolutionary and scholar w...
Mistaken Identity

Mistaken Identity

by Asad Haider

Whether class or race is the more important factor in modern politics is a question right at the heart of recent history’s most contentious debates. Among groups who should readily find common grou...
Latinx

Latinx

by Ed Morales

“Latinx” (pronounced “La-teen-ex”) is the gender-neutral term that covers the largest racial minority in the United States, and the poorest but fastest-growing American group, whose political empow...
The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain

The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain

by Ron Ramdin

This is the first comprehensive historical perspective on the relationship between Black workers and the changing patterns of Britain’s labour needs. It places in an historical context the developm...
Invisibility Blues

Invisibility Blues

by Michele Wallace

First published in 1990, Michele Wallace’s Invisibility Blues is widely regarded as a landmark in the history of black feminism. Wallace’s considerations of the black experience in America include ...
Traces of History

Traces of History

by Patrick Wolfe

Traces of History presents a new approach to race and to comparative colonial studies. Bringing a historical perspective to bear on the regimes of race that colonizers have sought to impose on A...
Rumba on the River

Rumba on the River

by Gary Stewart

There had always been music along the banks of the Congo River—lutes and drums, the myriad instruments handed down from ancestors. But when Joseph Kabasele and his African Jazz went chop for chop w...
Late Victorian Holocausts

Late Victorian Holocausts

by Mike Davis

Examining a series of El Niño-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davis discloses the intimate, baleful relationship betw...
Holding aloft the Banner of Ethiopia

Holding aloft the Banner of Ethiopia

by Winston James

Marcus Garvey, Claude McKay, Claudia Jones, C.L.R. James, Stokely Carmichael, Louis Farakhan—the roster of immigrants from the Caribbean who have made a profound impact on the development of radica...
Proletarian China

Proletarian China

Edited by Ivan Franceschini and Christian Sorace

In 2021, the Chinese Communist Party celebrated a century of existence. Since the Party’s humble beginnings in the Marxist groups of the Republican era to its current global ambitions, one thing ha...
African and Caribbean Politics

African and Caribbean Politics

by Manning Marable

What explains the proliferation of authoritarian regimes—some calling themselves “socialist”—in contemporary African and Caribbean politics?One of America’s leading black scholars assesses the hist...
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Filed under: Decolonize-your-bookshelves, student-reading