Fans pick 100 books like Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale

By Maria Mies,

Here are 100 books that Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale fans have personally recommended if you like Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

Shirin M. Rai Author Of Depletion: The Human Costs of Caring

From my list on social reproduction and the costs of maintenance of life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an academic and writer based in the UK. I have always wondered why capitalism claims to know the price of everything but the costs of nothing, unless it gets in the way of increased profit. I have been puzzling over gender inequalities in the political economy of our global society for many years now. This is not only an academic interest but a personal one; the rich buy in the labour of others and the poor get depleted more and faster. I wonder what our world would feel like if this labour of life-making was equally distributed, and valued as it should be.

Shirin's book list on social reproduction and the costs of maintenance of life

Shirin M. Rai Why did Shirin love this book?

A tour de force! This is an amazing book that takes a historical view to explain the story of women’s exclusion from public life and the physical and epistemic violence they experienced through the witch trials in Europe.

I would never have put these two elements together–bringing witch trials into view to help us understand the exclusion of women from the political economy of everyday life. This, Federici argues, led to the restructuring of household relations and the role of women in them, which in turn reflected the changing needs of society with the rise of capitalism.

I found this book illuminating and inspiring as it also tells us about the struggles of women against the shifts in their roles. 

By Silvia Federici,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Caliban and the Witch as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A groundbreaking work . . . Federici has become a crucial figure for . . . a new generation of feminists' Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars Room

A cult classic since its publication in the early years of this century, Caliban and the Witch is Silvia Federici's history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages through the European witch-hunts, the rise of scientific rationalism and the colonisation of the Americas, it gives a panoramic account of the often horrific violence with which the unruly human material of pre-capitalist…


Book cover of Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression

Shirin M. Rai Author Of Depletion: The Human Costs of Caring

From my list on social reproduction and the costs of maintenance of life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an academic and writer based in the UK. I have always wondered why capitalism claims to know the price of everything but the costs of nothing, unless it gets in the way of increased profit. I have been puzzling over gender inequalities in the political economy of our global society for many years now. This is not only an academic interest but a personal one; the rich buy in the labour of others and the poor get depleted more and faster. I wonder what our world would feel like if this labour of life-making was equally distributed, and valued as it should be.

Shirin's book list on social reproduction and the costs of maintenance of life

Shirin M. Rai Why did Shirin love this book?

This is a great book for understanding the concept of social reproduction, the maintenance of life itself.

Many well-known and thoughtful authors have contributed chapters to this book, explaining different aspects of social reproduction–which can be understood as the production and maintenance of life itself–and the consequences of its unequal distribution. 

I enjoyed reading this book, even though, at times, I felt that it needed to broaden its approach to social reproduction to include insights from how this work affects people in the Global South. 

By Tithi Bhattacharya (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Social Reproduction Theory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This groundbreaking collection explores the profound power of Social Reproduction Theory to deepen our understanding of everyday life under capitalism. While many Marxists tend to focus on the productive economy, this book focuses on issues such as child care, health care, education, family life and the roles of gender, race and sexuality, all of which are central to understanding the relationship between economic exploitation and social oppression.

In this book, leading writers such as Lise Vogel, Nancy Fraser, David McNally and Susan Ferguson reveal the ways in which daily and generational reproductive labour, found in households, schools, hospitals and prisons,…


Book cover of The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community

Shirin M. Rai Author Of Depletion: The Human Costs of Caring

From my list on social reproduction and the costs of maintenance of life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an academic and writer based in the UK. I have always wondered why capitalism claims to know the price of everything but the costs of nothing, unless it gets in the way of increased profit. I have been puzzling over gender inequalities in the political economy of our global society for many years now. This is not only an academic interest but a personal one; the rich buy in the labour of others and the poor get depleted more and faster. I wonder what our world would feel like if this labour of life-making was equally distributed, and valued as it should be.

Shirin's book list on social reproduction and the costs of maintenance of life

Shirin M. Rai Why did Shirin love this book?

This book shook up the debate on domestic work and the place of women in society.

Da la Costa and James put forward the radical idea that the working class must include non-waged workers in the home, most of whom are women. This was a revolutionary idea which brought to light how the work of women is overlooked in society and the economy. Wages for housework were their symbolic and material answer to this, and this generated a huge debate about how the modern family was created by the development of capitalism, with the care labour of women being a subsidy to capital.

When I first read this book, I felt as if a whole new way of thinking about women’s work had been opened up. 

By Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A superb introduction to the prospect of opening our idea of the working class to include non-waged workers, specifically women who work in the home. A simple idea with profound revolutionary consequences. If the workers of the world are not all in the factory, and are not all men, where does that leave us?


Book cover of Lies Our Mothers Told Us: The Indian Woman's Burden

Shirin M. Rai Author Of Depletion: The Human Costs of Caring

From my list on social reproduction and the costs of maintenance of life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an academic and writer based in the UK. I have always wondered why capitalism claims to know the price of everything but the costs of nothing, unless it gets in the way of increased profit. I have been puzzling over gender inequalities in the political economy of our global society for many years now. This is not only an academic interest but a personal one; the rich buy in the labour of others and the poor get depleted more and faster. I wonder what our world would feel like if this labour of life-making was equally distributed, and valued as it should be.

Shirin's book list on social reproduction and the costs of maintenance of life

Shirin M. Rai Why did Shirin love this book?

A friend gave me this book, and I couldn’t put it down. It is Bhowmick’s story–and that of her mother, who was a working mother and exhausted by managing both her professional work and homemaking.

Building on this, Bhowmick maps the lives of middle-class Indian women labouring under this double burden and yet giving hope to their daughters about the promise of the possibility of "having it all"–a fulfilling home life (despite the unequal burden of housework) and an ambitious professional life.

The tone of the book is angry as Bhowmick, a journalist, conveys her frustrations with the patriarchal social order that refuses to see the depleting effects of gendered inequalities in both the public and the private spheres of life for middle-class women in India.

By Nilanjana Bhowmick,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Lies Our Mothers Told Us as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Savitribai Phule, Mahasweta Devi, Amrita Pritam, Medha Patkar, Kamla Bhasin, and countless others have, since the nineteenth century, fought for and won equal rights for Indian women in a variety of areas-universal suffrage, inheritance and property rights, equal remuneration, prevention of sexual harassment at the workplace, and others. Pioneering feminists believed that due to these hard-won rights, their daughters and granddaughters would have the opportunity to have rewarding careers, participate in the social and political growth of the country, gain economic independence, and become equal partners in their marriages. On paper, it would appear that the lot of Indian women…


Book cover of The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life

Katy Motiey Author Of Imperfect: A Story about Loss, Courage, and Perseverance

From my list on Iranian women of survival and strength.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am the Chief Legal Officer at a US publicly traded company. Although I was born in Iran, I immigrated to the US from Iran at age ten. When I was three years old, my father’s side of the family tried to take my brother and me away from my mother after my father passed away. She fought a custody battle and lawsuit and eventually was forced to flee Iran with us during the revolution. I am passionate about the Iranian Revolution, my relationship with my very strong and remarkable mother who has been a mentor to me, as well as family relationships within Iranian families.

Katy's book list on Iranian women of survival and strength

Katy Motiey Why did Katy love this book?

I love this book because, ultimately, it’s about the portrayal of a daughter revealing her mother’s lifelong secret. The author describes her mother’s struggles in Iran before the author was born. 

The book shows how secretive the Iranian culture can be and, the downsides and negative aspects of a patriarchal society, and the long-term damage it can cause.

By Jasmin Darznik,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Good Daughter as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'With this one word, Lili had finally understood many things: that no matter what she promised or sacrificed or gave, she would always be 'broken' to her daughter.'

When Jasmin Darznik finds a photo among her father's possessions shortly after his death, she recognises the child in the veil and bride's clothes as her mother, Lili, but the groom is unfamiliar.

Who had her mother married all those years before? A few months later Lili sends Jasmin ten cassette tapes which reveal the secret history of their family: the true story of the abusive man she married, and the daughter…


Book cover of Subdivision

Eugenie Montague Author Of Swallow the Ghost

From my list on shapeshifting detective stories.

Why am I passionate about this?

A thing I love about detective stories is that, from the moment they were probably invented by Edgar Allen Poe in 1841, authors have been playing with the form. Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue begins with a display of Dupin’s ratiocinative powers, and detective stories do often involve a protagonist reasoning through clues and red herrings on the way toward the resolution of a central mystery. But the kinds of “clues” we use to make sense of (or make peace with) the world are varied, and the mysteries that obsess us are vast—as illustrated over and over again in this mutable genre.

Eugenie's book list on shapeshifting detective stories

Eugenie Montague Why did Eugenie love this book?

In classical detective fiction, the story of the crime is like a puzzle, and piece by piece, clue by clue, we arrive at the big picture. Subdivision is, in some ways, a classic puzzle mystery (it even involves a puzzle!)—except it doesn’t start at a crime scene. It starts with a woman arriving at a guesthouse in the surreal and Kafkaesque Subdivision where she now lives. She can’t remember why she is there or really anything from her past.
Unlike more classical detective fiction, she is not a guide; I followed her—tracking, assembling, interpreting—but when certain elements of the real (maybe) slid into focus, they did so mostly despite her. I couldn’t put it down, and notwithstanding its fairly cerebral tone, I cried at the end.

By J. Robert Lennon,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Subdivision as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An unnamed woman checks into a guesthouse in a mysterious district known only as the Subdivision. The guesthouse's owners, Clara and the Judge, are welcoming and helpful, if oddly preoccupied by the perpetually baffling jigsaw puzzle in the living room. With little more than a hand-drawn map and vague memories of her troubled past, the narrator ventures out in search of a job, an apartment, and a fresh start in life.

Accompanied by an unusually assertive digital assistant named Cylvia, the narrator is drawn deeper into an increasingly strange, surreal, and threatening world, which reveals itself to her through a…


Book cover of Animal

Vanessa Cuti Author Of The Tip Line

From my list on a divisive/polarizing main character.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a sucker for unlikeable. A charged word that’s sometimes used about protagonists but mostly only about female protagonists. When they don’t fit a template. When they are imperfect. When they push back. When they are too emotional or too distant or too interior or too driven or too obsessed or too mean or too nice or too smart or not smart enough. The protagonists in these novels are flawed—period. But flawed is complex and perfect is simple and simple is boring and no one wants to read a boring novel.

Vanessa's book list on a divisive/polarizing main character

Vanessa Cuti Why did Vanessa love this book?

Joan abandons her life and moves across the country on a quest to find a stranger from her past, convinced it will help her find peace.

In a savagely honest style, Animal recounts Joan’s affairs, family history, a traumatic incident from her youth, and a gaping emptiness within herself that she’s desperate to understand. “If someone asked me to describe myself in a single word, depraved is the one I would use.”

Depraved, sure. Maybe. But it’s impossible to be angry at her because she’s so candid about what she’s doing and why. The prose itself is fresh and stark and haunting.

By Lisa Taddeo,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Animal as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From Lisa Taddeo, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller and global phenomenon Three Women, comes an “intoxicating” (Entertainment Weekly), “fearless” (Los Angeles Times), and “explosive” (People) novel about “what happens when women are pushed beyond the brink, and what comes after the reckoning” (Esquire).

Joan has spent a lifetime enduring the cruelties of men. But when one of them commits a shocking act of violence in front of her, she flees New York City in search of Alice, the only person alive who can help her make sense of her past. In the sweltering hills above Los Angeles,…


Book cover of Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

Kara Alaimo Author Of Over The Influence: Why Social Media is Toxic for Women and Girls - And How We Can Take it Back

From my list on what it’s like to be a woman in this sexist, misogynistic world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a communication professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, a social media user, and a mom. After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, I wrote an op-ed for CNN arguing that he’d won the election on social media, and I just never stopped writing. A few hundred op-eds and a book later, I’m still interested in what social media is doing to us all and the issues women are up against in our society. My book allowed me to explore how social media is impacting every single aspect of the lives of women and girls and exactly what we can do about it. I wrote it as a call to arms.

Kara's book list on what it’s like to be a woman in this sexist, misogynistic world

Kara Alaimo Why did Kara love this book?

Mikki Kendall’s account of what Black women and girls are up against in America left me angry and devastated. Her description of how Black girls are sexualized at shockingly young ages and how portraying them this way enables sexual abuse absolutely gutted me.

For me, this book was a powerful reminder of why no woman is safe in a culture that says you have to be viewed as respectable in order to be worthy of protection from violence.

By Mikki Kendall,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Hood Feminism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"One of the most important books of the current moment."-Time

"A rousing call to action... It should be required reading for everyone."-Gabrielle Union, author of We're Going to Need More Wine

"A brutally candid and unobstructed portrait of mainstream white feminism." -Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist

A potent and electrifying critique of today's feminist movement announcing a fresh new voice in black feminism

Today's feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki…


Book cover of Now You See Me

Melinda Colt Author Of Dare Game

From my list on mysteries and thrillers to challenge your mind and grip your heart.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a writer and avid reader of crime fiction. Since I was four, my parents instilled in me a love for books, which has become a part of who I am. Before I became a bestselling and award-winning author, I was a reader, and I’ve always wanted to create stories that I love to read. I’m passionate about plots that stimulate my mind and characters that sneak into my heart and stay there. When I’m not writing, I work as a graphic designer. In my spare time, I watch crime shows and true crime documentaries. And when my mind needs a break from crime, I switch to my alter ego and write romantic comedies.

Melinda's book list on mysteries and thrillers to challenge your mind and grip your heart

Melinda Colt Why did Melinda love this book?

Book one in the Lacey Flint series, Now You See Me, got me hooked on the author and British mysteries. The writing style is evocative and deeply atmospheric, reminding me of gothic novels with a modern aspect.

I liked Lacey as a character, but what I found most compelling was the plot, which was a literary spider web. Although it was too graphic for my taste in places, the story was riveting enough to keep me engrossed until the very last page. I could barely keep track of all the twists and turns. By the time I finished reading, I had applauded the mind that could come up with such a complex story. 

By Sharon Bolton, Sharon Bolton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Now You See Me as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This breathtaking and exhilarating thriller from bestselling author Sharon Bolton packs a real punch: gruesome, atmospheric and utterly compelling, it relentlessly drives the reader on in their search uncover the truth. It twists and it turns and is taut with mystery and suspense...Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, Cara Hunter and Karin Slaughter.

'Really special' -- LEE CHILD
'Chilling and mesmerising' -- TESS GERRITSEN
'Probably one of the best thrillers that you will read all year' -- Choice Magazine
'Brilliant story, brilliant writer' -- ***** Reader review
'A brilliantly fast-paced crime novel' -- ***** Reader review
'A real page-turner' --…


Book cover of Green Girl

Lil O'Brien Author Of Not That I'd Kiss a Girl: A Kiwi girl's tale of coming out and coming of age

From my list on young women who are unorthodox but interesting.

Why am I passionate about this?

My love for strange women began with a love of the tomboy, growing up in the ‘80s and 90’s with characters like Pippi Longstocking and George from The Famous Five. They’re young women who broke the rules of decorum or gender presentation—and they just always seemed to be having a lot more fun. Or at least more interesting experiences. This love of rebels and unruly women has stuck with me, and I think our depiction of women like this has become deeper and more varied. I just love a character who’s a bit of an odd duck, is irrepressible or voracious, or just plain messy. Nice is boring—give me the chaos.

Lil's book list on young women who are unorthodox but interesting

Lil O'Brien Why did Lil love this book?

This book kicked off my obsession with stories about young women who are trying to make sense of all the versions of themselves they have inside and weighing up which one to present to the world at any given time. The protagonist, Ruth, is an American living in London who works at a department store, spritzing perfume during the day, watching all the people go past, and trying to understand how the other young women who work there seem so self-assured. This is not a plot-driven book so much as a character study of a character who doesn’t know who she is yet.

Kate Zambreno’s writing is absolutely gorgeous. She creates a distance between Ruththe ‘green girl’and the world, like she’s looking through a window and can see people inside talking but not understand what they’re saying. At the same time, I recognized myself in Ruth,…

By Kate Zambreno,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Green Girl as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With the fierce emotional and intellectual power of such classics as Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and Clarice Lispector's The Hour of the Star, Kate Zambreno's novel Green Girl is a provocative, sharply etched portrait of a young woman navigating the spectrum between anomie and epiphany. First published in 2011 in a small press edition, Green Girl was named one of the best books of the year by critics including Dennis Cooper and Roxane Gay. In Bookforum, James Greer called it "ambitious in a way few works of fiction are." This summer it is being…


Book cover of Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation
Book cover of Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression
Book cover of The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community

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