Sources for when you bring every essay back to capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy

When your deadline is creeping up and all you know is that capitalism=bad, we’ve got you covered.

This reading list is for all of the students who bring every essay back to colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy regardless of what the topic is— and for those who hate referencing.

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa remains a relevant study for understanding the so-called “great divergence” between Africa and Europe. It is a key resource for grasping the multiplication of global inequality today.

Rodney, W., & Davis, A. (2018). How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Verso

What unites Rodney’s work is the ongoing reinvention of a living conception of Marxism.

Rodney, W. (2022). Decolonial Marxism: Essays from the Pan-African Revolution. Verso

A collections spanning three decades of work from one of the foremost contemporary critical thinkers on racism, geography and incarceration.

Gilmore, R. W., Bhandar, B., & Toscano, A. (2022). Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation. Verso

Racecraft “ought to be positioned,” as Bookforum put it, “at the center of any discussion of race in American life.”

Fields, B. J., & Fields, K. E. (2022). Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. Verso

The most influential theory of the origins of women’s oppression in the modern era, in a beautiful new edition.

Engels, F., Leacock, B. E., & Doyle, J. (2021). The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Verso

The Critique of Everyday Life is perhaps the richest, most prescient work about modern capitalism to emerge from one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers. 

Lefebvre, H. (2014). The Critique of Everyday Life: The One-Volume Edition. Verso

The most comprehensive and thorough analysis of the prison system of the United States. 

Davis, A. (2016). If They Come in the Morning … Voices of Resistance. Verso

A classic study of the origin of white privilege from the activist who first coined the term, Theodore W. Allen’s work remains an indispensable resource for making sense of our conflicted present.

Allen, T. (2021). The Invention of the White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression. Verso

A new approach to race and to comparative colonial studies.

Wolfe, P. (2016) Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race. Verso

Charts the history of women’s liberation and calls for a revitalized feminism.

Fraser, N. (2020) Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. Verso

The Communist Manifesto remains both an essential guide to the transformations wrought by capitalism and presents the solution to its inequalities and exploitation.

Engels, F., Lenin, V., & Marx, K. (2022). The Communist Manifesto / The April Theses. Verso

Priyamvada Gopal examines a century of dissent on the question of empire and shows how British critics of empire were influenced by rebellions and resistance in the colonies.

Gopal, P. (2020). Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent. Verso

The classic, brilliant, best-selling account of the rise of the world’s slums, where, according to the UN, one billion people now live. 

Davis, M. (2017). Planet of Slums. Verso

All books are 40% off as part of our Student Reading Sale. Ends September 30 at 11:59PM EST. See all our student reading lists here.

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...

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...

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...

Racecraft

by Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields

Praised by a wide variety of people from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Zadie Smith, Racecraft "ought to be positioned," as Bookforum put it, "at the center of any discussion of race in American life." Most p...

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

by Friedrich Engels

Foreword by Jennifer Doyle

Introduction by Eleanor Burke Leacock

In this provocative and now-classic work, Friedrich Engels explores the interrelated development of the family and the state from ancient society to the Victorian era. Drawing on new anthropologica...

Critique of Everyday Life

by Henri Lefebvre

The three-volume text by Henri Lefebvre is perhaps the richest, most prescient work about modern capitalism to emerge from one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers and is now availabl...

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...

The Invention of the White Race

by Theodore W. Allen

When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no 'white' people there; nor, according to colonial records, would there be for another sixty years. Historical debate about the orig...

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...

Fortunes of Feminism

by Nancy Fraser

Second Wave feminism emerged as a struggle for women’s liberation and took its place alongside other radical movements. But feminism’s subsequent immersion in identity politics coincided with a dec...

The Communist Manifesto / The April Theses

by Friedrich Engels, V. I. Lenin and Karl Marx

Introduction by Tariq Ali

It was the 1917 Russian Revolution that transformed the scale of the Communist Manifesto, making it the key text for socialists everywhere. On the centenary of this upheaval, this volume pairs Marx...

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...

Planet of Slums

by Mike Davis

According to the United Nations, more than one billion people now live in the slums of the cities of the South. In this brilliant and ambitious book, Mike Davis explores the future of a radically u...

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