Reading list

History: Verso Student Reading

History from below for the new academic year.

Verso Books 2 September 2025

History: Verso Student Reading

For radicals, the best guide to the present is our past successes and failures. Use this list to navigate our wide array of books on global histories of revolutions, colonial plunder, and class struggle.

Walter Rodney: A Lightning Rod of Black Working Class Power

Walter Rodney described himself as a guerrilla intellectual, committed to studying the concrete realities of the working class. Forty-five years on from his assassination, his work remains incredibly prescient.

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Verso World History

Covering a timespan stretching from Ancient Greece and Rome to the twentieth century, this series makes landmark texts available to a new generation of readers.

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Robin Blackburn: A Lifetime of Scholarship on Slavery and its Abolition

Blackburn charts the historic impact of slavery and anti-slavery, of black and white activists, of fugitive slaves, feminists, writers, clerics and soldiers.

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Verso’s Southern Questions

The Southern Questions series features first-hand accounts written by participants in the drama of decolonisation and its aftermath.

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The Histories of Revolutions

These books dive into how revolutions are made, and what we can learn from their successes and failures.

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Experiments in Communes

Ever wanted to move to a commune with your friends? You’re not the first.

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Disruption and counterculture

How can we build a resurgence of disruptive politics in the twenty-first century?

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  • The Barrel of a Gun

    The Barrel of a Gun

    A committed communist and anti-apartheid activist, Ruth First dedicated her life to African liberation struggles until her assas­sination by South Africa’s Special Branch in 1982. The Barrel of a G...
  • My Country, Africa

    My Country, Africa

    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...
    Paperback

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