Here are 100 books that Warrior Dreams fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a history professor, but I’m also a reader. I love books—fiction and nonfiction—that reveal a world, a character, an idea, or a political movement in ways that I didn’t previously fully understand. That make me see more deeply and think more clearly. I teach and write about the history of the United States, especially its history of radical or extreme political groups. Where did this interest come from? Well, I first visited the U.S. in 1980, when I was eleven years old, and truth be told, my fascination with the country and its people has not abated since.
I always love it when a work of history connects with and helps me understand the present, and Linda Gordon’s book certainly does that.
Not only does she provide a riveting account of the revival of the Klan in the 1920s, she clearly demonstrates the tremendous impact the organization had on America during this period and long beyond, through its skillful use of demagoguery, its canny media strategy and its underlying politics of resentment.
Extraordinary national acclaim accompanied the publication of award-winning historian Linda Gordon's disturbing and markedly timely history of the reassembled Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Dramatically challenging our preconceptions of the hooded Klansmen responsible for establishing a Jim Crow racial hierarchy in the 1870s South, this "second Klan" spread in states principally above the Mason-Dixon line by courting xenophobic fears surrounding the flood of immigrant "hordes" landing on American shores. "Part cautionary tale, part expose" (Washington Post), The Second Coming of the KKK "illuminates the surprising scope of the movement" (The New Yorker); the Klan attracted four-to-six-million members through secret…
I’m a history professor, but I’m also a reader. I love books—fiction and nonfiction—that reveal a world, a character, an idea, or a political movement in ways that I didn’t previously fully understand. That make me see more deeply and think more clearly. I teach and write about the history of the United States, especially its history of radical or extreme political groups. Where did this interest come from? Well, I first visited the U.S. in 1980, when I was eleven years old, and truth be told, my fascination with the country and its people has not abated since.
We tend to think that the success of the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s was somehow inevitable. But as Clive Webb shows in this marvelous history, this was not really the case. Resistance to civil rights, especially in the South, was deep-seated, widespread, and vicious.
Unearthing the almost forgotten history of racist extremists such as Bryant Bowles, John Kaspar, J.B. Stoner, Rear Admiral John Crommelin, and Major General Edwin Walker, Webb reminds us of the sobering reality that there is often very little separating extremist voices from those of many “ordinary” Americans.
This title connects civil rights opponents to America's tradition of radical conservatism. The decade following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision saw white southerners mobilize in massive resistance to racial integration. Most segregationists conceded that ultimately they could only postpone the demise of Jim Crow. Some militant whites, however, believed it possible to win the civil rights struggle. Histories of the black freedom struggle, when they mention these racist zealots at all, confine them to the margin of the story. These extremist whites are caricatured as ineffectual members of the lunatic fringe. Civil rights activists, however, saw them…
I’m a history professor, but I’m also a reader. I love books—fiction and nonfiction—that reveal a world, a character, an idea, or a political movement in ways that I didn’t previously fully understand. That make me see more deeply and think more clearly. I teach and write about the history of the United States, especially its history of radical or extreme political groups. Where did this interest come from? Well, I first visited the U.S. in 1980, when I was eleven years old, and truth be told, my fascination with the country and its people has not abated since.
Harrowing, haunting, and utterly compelling, Langer’s superb investigation of the murder of an Ethiopian immigrant called Mulugeta Seraw by racist skinheads in Portland, Oregon, in 1988 always reminds me of the importance of good journalism, the demands of justice and the power of empathy.
It is a book of focused, local history with a much wider story to tell.
A riveting account of a skinhead killing and a chilling look at the world in which it happened
On November 12, 1988, a group of Portland, Oregon, skinheads known as East Side White Pride met for an evening of beer and racist banter. Later that night, they encountered three Ethiopians; a street fight broke out and Kenneth Mieske brutally beat Mulugeta Seraw with a bat. In the early-morning hours, Seraw died.
Drawing on more than ten years of original research, award-winning journalist Elinor Langer takes the Seraw case as the occasion for a thorough investigation of the Nazi-inspired racist movement…
I’m a history professor, but I’m also a reader. I love books—fiction and nonfiction—that reveal a world, a character, an idea, or a political movement in ways that I didn’t previously fully understand. That make me see more deeply and think more clearly. I teach and write about the history of the United States, especially its history of radical or extreme political groups. Where did this interest come from? Well, I first visited the U.S. in 1980, when I was eleven years old, and truth be told, my fascination with the country and its people has not abated since.
Faced with the deluge of modern events, I rely on intrepid authors like Mogelson to help me make sense of the world.
The book is his report back from spending a year traveling across the U.S. from the spring of 2020 to the winner of 2021, from Covid-lockdown protests in Michigan to the insurrection of January 6 in Washington, D.C. I found it both insightful and heartbreaking.
The New Yorker's award-winning war correspondent returns to his own country to chronicle a story of mounting civic breakdown and violent disorder, in a vivid eyewitness narrative of revelatory explanatory power.
'This is a searing book, exquisitely reported, lyrically told, and so vivid it will make your heart stop-a dark journey into what ails America' Patrick Radden Keefe
On the morning of January 6, a gallows was erected on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. A little after noon, as thousands of Trump supporters marched past the structure, some paused to climb its wooden steps and take pictures of the…
I am a historian and a professor of political management at George Washington University, and I became interested in the John Birch Society when I encountered the group while writing my first book, on Ronald Reagan's 1966 California governor's campaign. I'm also fascinated by debates about political extremism in modern America including such questions as: how does the culture define extremism in a given moment? How does the meaning of extremism shift over time? And how do extremists sometimes become mainstream within the context of American politics? These were some of the puzzles that motivated me to write Birchers.
A classic in the genre, Belew’s book traces the rise of the white power movement to “the aftermath of the Vietnam War.”
Bring the War Home examines how a blend of apocalyptic ideas, obsession with guns rights, hardline antigovernment views, and white power beliefs became a current in modern America. I admire its groundbreaking research, bold argument, and impact.
"A gripping study of white power...Explosive." -New York Times
"Helps explain how we got to today's alt-right." -Terry Gross, Fresh Air
The white power movement in America wants a revolution.
Returning to a country ripped apart by a war they felt they were not allowed to win, a small group of Vietnam veterans and disgruntled civilians who shared their virulent anti-communism and potent sense of betrayal concluded that waging war on their own country was justified. The command structure of their covert movement gave women a prominent place. They operated with discipline, made…
I’m a historian of the African American freedom struggle with more than two decades of experience researching and teaching on this topic. My work focuses especially on the connections between race and class and the ways Black people have fought for racial and economic justice in the twentieth century. I write books and articles that are accessible for general audiences and that help them to understand the historical origins of racism in the United States, the various forms it has taken, and the reasons why it has persisted into the present.
In colonial North America, plantation owners were equal opportunity exploiters who mistreated European and African laborers alike, and workers frequently resisted by running away, stealing or destroying property, and engaging in occasional rebellions. Theodore Allen explains how colonial elites invented America’s racial divide through a series of laws that ended up enslaving most African Americans for life and reserving the rights of freedom and citizenship for European Americans. Since then, race and class have been intertwined, laying the basis for white supremacist practices and beliefs that shaped the development of the United States and continue to allocate wealth and power unequally today.
On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, Martin Luther King declared his dream of a racially integrated, non-discriminatory American society. Some three centuries before, that dream had in many ways been a reality, since white skin privilege was recognized neither in law nor in the social practices of the labouring classes. But by the early decades of the eighteenth century, racial oppression would be the norm in the plantation colonies, and African Americans would continue to suffer under its yoke for more than two centuries. In this second volume of his acclaimed study of the origins of racial…
For most of my life, I have dedicated myself to confronting, combatting, or deconstructing white supremacy. It impacts everyone. Much of my work is about highlighting the ways Black people have refused and resisted racial discrimination, violence, and harm. We can never have too many tools, and equally important for me was being able to have tools that achieved their purpose. I wrote We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance to remind readers that there has never been a time in the history of this country when Black people have not fought back against their oppression.
When I first read this book, I could not put it down. Taylor is a beautiful storyteller, and it’s no surprise that her book was a finalist for the LA Times book award.
Taylor teaches readers that during slavery sometimes revenge was justice or the closest thing to it. Story after story, we are introduced to women who suffered terribly at the hands of their enslaver. But in each case, women fought back, plotted, and sought revenge against their perpetrators.
What I appreciated about the book is that it pushes back against the idea that Black women were passive or even nonviolent. This book gives us a portrait into the personal relationships that ended in bloodshed because of the violence of slavery.
From the colonial through the antebellum era, enslaved women in the US used lethal force as the ultimate form of resistance. By amplifying their voices and experiences, Brooding over Bloody Revenge strongly challenges assumptions that enslaved women only participated in covert, non-violent forms of resistance, when in fact they consistently seized justice for themselves and organized toward revolt. Nikki M. Taylor expertly reveals how women killed for deeply personal instances of injustice committed by their owners. The stories presented, which span centuries and legal contexts, demonstrate that these acts of lethal force were carefully pre-meditated. Enslaved women planned how and…
Born and raised in New York City, my plans to become an artist got sidetracked by an interest in psychology. While in school, I graduated college, majoring in Fine Arts and Psychology, combining my two interests. I continued my education as a Graphic Designer at The School of Visual Arts. I worked as a freelance graphic artist for a while before starting a career in the creative arts therapies. While I enjoy a dark, brooding, suspenseful mystery, sometimes I need a little humor to round out those dark edges. Despite some bad things happening in the world, most people do silly, goofy, and often stupid things and you have to laugh.
How can a story about white supremacists, lottery tickets, and turtles make you laugh? In Carl Hiaasen’s Lucky You, murder and mayhem are the least of its treasures. Hiaasen’s style is witty, wildly humorous and with a keen eye for the obvious. He has a way of inhabiting his stories with colorful, bombastic characters who linger long after you turn that last page. He sets most of his stories in southern Florida, which only adds to Hiaasen’s unique setting and style.
From the author of STRIP TEASE and STORMY WEATHER, a lighthearted crime novel set in Florida. Two white-trash reprobates win a lottery jackpot of $28 million but are forced to share this amount with a third party. When they decide that this is not acceptable they set out to find the other winner and void her claim by violent means.
You’ve got to root for the underdog, right? And there’s no bigger underdog than fictional villains. While real-life criminals are doing very nicely, thank you very much, in fiction, the bad guy is screwed from the start. What could be more relatable than knowing on a bone-deep, existential level that you’ve already lost? And what could be more heroic than stepping out onto the field of play knowing that no matter how hard you play, you’re still going down? Keep your flawed anti-heroes; they’re just too chicken to go over to the losing side. I’ll cheer for the doomed bad guy every single time.
I am haunted by the story that Richard Allen heard skinheads were a thing, went to a pub, bought a couple of local skinheads a few pints while he pumped them for stories and then went away and wrote Skinhead in a weekend.
A weekend?! It totally shows. Skinhead is as rough, nasty, and real as pulp fiction gets. Titular skinhead Joe Hawkins is a horrendously violent teenage thug, but beyond the aggro is a beautiful pen portrait of working-class London in the 70s. All chipped formica and smashed in faces.
It’s the sort of raw crime writing I find terrifying and compelling all at the same time. It’s so short, visceral, and urgent I inhaled it in one sitting.
Sixteen-year-old Joe Hawkins is the anti-hero’s anti-hero. His life is ruled by clothes, beer, football and above all violence – violence against hippies, authority, racial minorities and anyone else unfortunate enough to get in his way.
Joe is a London skinhead – a member of a uniquely British subculture which arose rapidly in the late 1960’s. While other skins were driven mainly by music, fashion and working-class pride, Joe and his mob use their formidable street style as a badge of aggressive rage, even while Joe dreams of making a better life for himself.
I’m a writer and a Shakespeare and critical race studies scholar who’s always been intrigued by the invisible, artificial race-based boundaries in our world. I love analyzing the lives of literary characters and seeing how they can serve as mirrors for us along lines of gender, mental health, and more. My critical interests are informed by the fact that I grew up in a predominantly Black/Latino low-income neighborhood and attended an affluent, predominantly white private school from the sixth to twelfth grade. My adolescent experiences with inclusion/exclusion dynamics required me to reflect on race, for example, so I could understand and navigate the kinds of socio-cultural dynamics that affect us all.
I love this book because Fleming offers necessary socio-historical correctives and demystifies many myths that people believe about race, racism, and stereotypes.
The writing is punchy, pithy and humorous. As such, it is entertainingly educational and scholarly while presenting facts in a way that is accessible to general readers.
I also love this book because it is incredibly useful both to those who are “stupid about race,” so to speak, and those who aren’t. For the former, I think this is a great book to start with on one’s journey toward becoming more race-conscious and more educated about race.
A unique and irreverent take on everything that's wrong with our “national conversation about race”—and what to do about it
How to Be Less Stupid About Race is your essential guide to breaking through the half-truths and ridiculous misconceptions that have thoroughly corrupted the way race is represented in the classroom, pop culture, media, and politics. Centuries after our nation was founded on genocide, settler colonialism, and slavery, many Americans are kinda-sorta-maybe waking up to the reality that our racial politics are (still) garbage. But in the midst of this reckoning, widespread denial and misunderstandings about race persist, even as…
