100 books like We Do This 'Til We Free Us

I knew Michelle when she was teaching at Stanford University before she wrote this book, but I didn’t know then how much of the work she’d done. Her book is so profound that when I first read it, I was in Vegas on vacation, and I couldn’t get out of the room because I was so deep into reading her book. I couldn’t get to the great food or the penny slots because she was putting together all the pieces I had read about or heard discussed in different places, and she built a picture of the system of oppression Black people live under in the United States.

She affirmed what I had suspected: that incarceration continues the enslavement of Black people. I called a colleague and said, this book will have more impact than I could making speeches to a thousand people at a time, a hundred times a… show more.

Rothstein mercilessly cuts through the political rhetoric of the past century of American politics and gets down to the nitty-gritty: Racial disparities in housing and economics were established and exacerbated by our own elected officials.

Rothstein exposes direct lines between government action and racial inequality, furthering the idea that the system isn’t broken. Rather, it works as it was designed to by allowing access to the few while neglecting the many.

This was a book I first read nearly fifty years ago after my childhood friend Nate Harrington taught me to read while we were in prison together at 18 and 19 years old. As part of our commitment to helping each other return to our communities as an asset and not a liability, the men in prison taught each other political education classes, which included reading key texts like Malcolm X’s autobiography.

This book gave me an indication that I could do something different with my life. That moment occurred when it was revealed that Malcolm was known as “Detroit Red” on the streets of New York City–but when he went to prison and found a true education, he also embraced a new identity and new way of life. He died as Malcolm. His journey indicated that I could make a transition, too. It also helped me recognize that If… show more.

Smith offers an up-close-and-personal tour of how the history of slavery has been preserved in various corners of the Earth. From Monticello Plantation in Virginia to the House of Slaves in Gorée Island (Senegal), I was taken on an eye-opening, albeit sometimes cringeworthy, journey through modern-day perceptions of a haunted past.

For me, this retelling of history is most fascinating. It forces the reader to reckon with the idea that truth isn’t just in the eye of the beholder but in the mouth of the teller. How can we find truth in history if it is being told in so many ways? I weirdly enjoyed wrestling with it as I ventured through the places Smith visited as if his storytelling was escorting me.

The Red Nation is a revolutionary Indigenous organization that is part of the historic 21st-century revival of Indigenous culture and political resistance that has emerged across the Americas to block oil pipelines, prevent mining projects, and basically lead the fight to save us all from climate extinction. This is their manifesto.

The Red Deal engages with many of the ideas of the “Green New Deal” proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others, but starts from the standpoint of Indigenous people across the world. As a result, it puts the fight against climate change in the context of 500 years of capitalism and colonialism, and makes an inspiring case why everyone who wants a sustainable economy should support Indigenous people’s fights for their land and freedom.

Bernie Sanders’ strong presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020 have made millions of people think that socialism in the US is an actual possibility rather than a bizarre science-fiction premise. But what would happen if Bernie won? How would a socialist president deal with government institutions and a business class determined at every stop to undermine them? 

This book looks at the experiences of Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain—as well as the leftist SYRIZA government in Greece—to offer advice on how socialists should start preparing for the challenges of victory that we hope to face.   

Greg Shotwell was a longtime worker at General Motors and activist in the United Auto Workers who was notorious among executives in both the company and union for his rank-and-file newsletter, Live Bait and Ammo. This book is a collection of articles from that newsletter, and it’s a bitingly funny and ultimately heartbreaking account of autoworkers’ losing fight to maintain the rights and living standards that had made the union famous. 

Unlike the other books on my list, this book is the story of a defeat, but it is also a portrait of the generation of working-class fighters who kept alive the radical shop-floor traditions that are an essential component of any socialist vision. This is the book that made me want to become a writer. 

In order to have socialism, we need to have a planet on which to be socialists—preferably a planet that isn’t constantly on fire or under water from climate change. So we need to convert our energy systems from fossil fuels to renewables like solar and wind, but as Ashley Dawson argues in this great book, we can’t afford to then let energy corporations start owning sunlight and air the way they do oil and coal. 

People’s Power introduces us to the age-old idea of commonly owned natural resources and looks to modern examples from around the world where cities, towns, and countries and pioneering ways to make the “energy commons” a reality.

This book presents contrasting views on the privatization of policing: whether it is mostly a good thing, its downsides, and which aspects of policing lend themselves to privatization. 

Forst argues that a blend of public and private policing can provide a more equitable and efficient delivery of policing services than can public police alone.  

Manning, unfriendly to economics and management efficiency, takes a dramaturgical perspective, concluding that those paradigms are fundamentally at odds with the traditional policing mandate, which confers on the government a monopoly on the use of coercion. 

This book is so unique because Brooks recounts her experience applying to be a sworn, armed reserve police officer with the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department.

The book thus provides a window into the typically closed-off life within the police institution. It’s a compelling account—based on first-hand experience—of how we can better understand and improve the police institution. Also, the book is simply chock-full of good storytelling.