100 books like Weavers of Revolution

To get through over a hundred books on my History PhD comprehensive exams list, I allowed myself a maximum of one reading day plus a maximum of one double-sided cue card per book.

Jeff Gould crammed so much super cool theory about populism and revolution, workers, and women into his beautifully written book that he got four cue cards and three days! Gould explains that the first Somoza (named “Anastasio”) rose to power largely thanks to US influence, but, once there, he built his own following and passed some remarkably progressive reforms, at least on paper.

The book changed the way I think about populism and revolution in Latin America, completely inspiring the PhD research that became my first book and my current project on rural populism in Brazil.
To Lead as Equals shows how powerful sugar workers can be when rural sugar-cane cutters unite with industrial sugar-factory workers, and… show more.

I came across Margaret Randall’s Sandino’s Daughters Revisited while researching my MA thesis on women in the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution, and I love to use it with students since it tells a fascinating history through individuals’ stories.

The book is a really interesting follow-up to Sandino’s Daughters, which was based on interviews Randall did before the triumph of the revolution. Here, Randall is interviewing many of the same women after the Sandinistas lost democratic elections in 1990, offering lots of insights to readers about the complex causes for the triumph and downfall of the revolution.

The twelve women came from many different backgrounds, including: Diana Espinoza, who worked for an employee-owned factory during the revolutionary period; Daisy Zamora, a poet who served as vice-minister of culture during the revolution, and Dora Maria Vidaluz Meneses, the daughter of a Somozan official who shares some really moving stories about her time living… show more.

This was a really amazing book to read with students in my graduate course on the social history of commodities.

It contributes some really original theory about power and race, the peasantry, politics, and other major topics that those more inclined towards sociology or political science would appreciate. It is a little like the Dominican Republic version of Jeff Gould’s To Lead as Equals on Nicaragua or Gladys McCormick’s The Logic of Compromise: Authoritarianism, Betrayal, and Revolution in Rural Mexico, 1935-1965.

I am constantly telling students and colleagues about the fascinating arguments presented in Foundations of Despotism, which echoes Gould’s evidence that dictators cannot remain in power through violence, alone.

Turits’ interviews with peasants and letters that he found in the Dominican national archives from humble rural peoples show that after first coming to power in the early 1930s—ostensibly purely because of US support—the Trujillo regime built a rural base… show more.

How could you not love a book that explores the at times hilarious, at times tragic, but always fascinating impact of the banana in the United States and Latin America?

From the changing faces of Chiquita Banana to cookbooks and popular jingles like, “Yes, we have no bananas!” Soluri shows us how the banana became one of the most common fruits in the US diet. At the same time, he shows how US importers and marketers took control over, manipulated, and expanded, much of the production in tropical areas like Honduras.

On the production side, Soluri explores ironies like the fact that the United Fruit Company created the perfect breeding ground for pathogens by shrinking banana gene pools and shoving the same type of banana trees all in a row... or the tragic fact that “macho” banana workers became sterile after refusing to wear protective clothing.

John Soluri’s book is… show more.

The 1973 coup in Chile violently destroyed the freely elected Marxist government of Salvador Allende and installed the brutal 17-year dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. For years afterward suspicions swirled that the U.S. was behind the event. But evidence was largely anecdotal. What is so impressive about this book is Kornbluh’s persistence deploying the Freedom of Information Act to obtain thousands of classified documents related to the coup. Kornbluh connects the dots and reveals the smoking guns. Through facsimiles of actual cables, telexes, and phone memos (many still highly redacted) this dossier allows you to draw your own conclusions about what really happened in Chile.

So much ink has been spent on the Nixon administration’s early 1970s plotting and policies during the regime of democratic socialist president Salvador Allende. This exquisite book is a sharp reminder that, while far less studied, the Reagan administration was deeply involved in a Chile run by the very political actor who ousted Allende: General Augusto Pinochet. Yet, contrary to what we often assumed, the Reagan team eventually embraced a policy aimed to get Washington’s erstwhile ally out of power. 

Despite its garish cover, How to Read Donald Duck is not about cartoons. It's a penetrating analysis from a Marxist and nationalist perspective that helped me understand the influence of Disney in particular and U.S. entertainment exports in general in Latin America. The book was originally published in Spanish as "Para Leer el Pato Donald." The book was considered so dangerous that the Chilean Navy dumped the entire third edition into the sea during the dictatorship. 

The book was my first insight into what's known in leftist circles as U.S. cultural imperialism. A lot has changed and lot has not since the book was first written, but it makes me reflect on the role U.S. cultural products play in Latin America today.

This book studies the anti-imperialist dialog between twentieth-century Latin American and Filipino intellectuals, writers, and diplomats who, in her view, appropriated brotherly discourses of Latinidad and Hispanidad as part of their resistance versus US imperialism. This book opened my eyes to the fact that, as late as the twentieth century, Filipino intellectuals still saw themselves as an intrinsic part of the Hispanic world and took for granted that it was beneficial for their country to keep a cultural and sociopolitical alliance with Latin America if they wanted to rid themselves of the new imperial yoke: the United States.

This book introduced me to the concept of a "private pregnancy." Imagine that you are a wealthy young woman in the colonial Spanish empire. Your beloved asks to marry you, and you agree; based on that agreement, you begin to have sexual relations. You become pregnant. In many cases, this would not matter: marriage would eventually legitimate that child.

But what if he leaves or dies? You and your family have to create a fiction that you are not pregnant, place your child elsewhere, and hope you live an honorable enough life that the child can someday also benefit from your reputation. This is the kernel of Twinam's story of how Latin American elites manufactured notions of honor within their society and how Spanish monarchs ended up publishing a price list for legitimating illegitimate births after the fact. It really revealed the mindset behind elite society, not only colonial but… show more.

Besides being intricately involved in the history of U.S. foreign policy, baseball has also pursued its own foreign policy, projecting the game beyond American borders but always controlling the sport wherever it’s played.

This book examines the colonization of baseball in the Caribbean and Latin America. After breaking the color barrier, black Americans began emerging in the sport. An amateur draft was added and then free agency, both driving up the cost of ballplayers until organized baseball realized the gold mine of inexpensive players available south of the border.

The Latin player influx has helped baseball diversity but it has caused a dramatic decline in U.S. black ballplayers. Meanwhile, baseball owners are making billions, partly through their firm control over Latin leagues and players. This book is a call to action against this exploitation.