100 books like Workers on the Nile

By Joel Beinin, Zachary Lockman,

Here are 100 books that Workers on the Nile fans have personally recommended if you like Workers on the Nile. 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 The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of its Communists, Ba`thists and Free Officers

Johan Franzen Author Of Red Star Over Iraq: Iraqi Communism Before Saddam

From my list on Middle Eastern communism and leftist movements.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up during the Cold War, I became interested in Communism early. I read about how the Communist International worked to spread the world revolution. Despite its Eurocentrism, Communism appealed to people in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. However, it failed to make meaningful inroads in the Middle East. I wanted to know why. When I trained to become a historian, my curiosity turned towards the Arab world. I decided to combine my two interests and research the history of Arab Communist movements. I discovered a fascinating world of firebrand activists struggling against the tide of nationalism, fascism, and religious bigotry. I hope you find these books as gripping as I did.

Johan's book list on Middle Eastern communism and leftist movements

Johan Franzen Why did Johan love this book?

This immense book, which in reality is three books in one, is what first attracted me to Iraqi communism. I had long been interested in the history of the Communist movement, but none of the many books I had read on the topic had ever dealt with Communism in the Arab world. Batatu’s book was a revelation. It is a tour de force of the history of Iraqi social movements of the early twentieth century. Despite many detours along the way, Batatu masterfully tells a gripping narrative of the disparate groups who ended up in the Iraqi state that was created after World War I and how they made sense of this new reality. 

By Hanna Batatu,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The book description for the previously published "The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Ba'thists, and Free Officers" is not yet available.


Book cover of Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948

Arash Azizi Author Of What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom

From my list on changing the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

Having grown up under a repressive dictatorship in Iran, I always wondered about how humans could come together to bring about change. Years of living in different countries have only prolonged that quest. I had identified as a socialist since my teen years in the 2000s (when this political identity wasn’t so popular) and have continuously studied the history of the Left and the pathways it offers to make a better world. I don’t believe in exhaustive favorite lists, so these are just five books that, I think, will help us better appreciate this long history of a quest for progress. 

Arash's book list on changing the world

Arash Azizi Why did Arash love this book?

The seemingly eternal conflict in Israel/Palestine means that many readers know some basic facts about the place. But much of its history remains unknown.

What I love about this book is its patient and lucid exploration of one of such little-known histories: that of Jewish and Arab workers and how they once collaborated against all odds in the waning years of the British Mandate of Palestine, all the way up to the foundation of Israel in 1948. 

I first read this book years ago as part of my graduate studies, but its stories and characters have remained with me throughout the years

By Zachary Lockman,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Comrades and Enemies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In "Comrades and Enemies" Zachary Lockman explores the mutually formative interactions between the Arab and Jewish working classes, labor movements, and worker-oriented political parties in Palestine just before and during the period of British colonial rule. Unlike most of the historical and sociological literature on Palestine in this period, "Comrades and Enemies" avoids treating the Arab and Jewish communities as if they developed independently of each other. Instead of focusing on politics, diplomacy, or military history, Lockman draws on detailed archival research in both Arabic and Hebrew, and on interviews with activists, to delve into the country's social, economic, and…


Book cover of A History of Egyptian Communism: Jews and Their Compatriots in Quest of Revolution

Johan Franzen Author Of Red Star Over Iraq: Iraqi Communism Before Saddam

From my list on Middle Eastern communism and leftist movements.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up during the Cold War, I became interested in Communism early. I read about how the Communist International worked to spread the world revolution. Despite its Eurocentrism, Communism appealed to people in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. However, it failed to make meaningful inroads in the Middle East. I wanted to know why. When I trained to become a historian, my curiosity turned towards the Arab world. I decided to combine my two interests and research the history of Arab Communist movements. I discovered a fascinating world of firebrand activists struggling against the tide of nationalism, fascism, and religious bigotry. I hope you find these books as gripping as I did.

Johan's book list on Middle Eastern communism and leftist movements

Johan Franzen Why did Johan love this book?

I found this book very interesting as it re-examines the early period of the Communist movement in Egypt. The history of Egyptian Communism has been extensively studied, but Ginat’s book was able to bring something new to the discussion by analysing previously unstudied Soviet archives. He demonstrates the important role Eastern European and native Jews played in the movement's early days—a role that subsequent generations of Communist historians had largely edited out. The book is rich with detail and provides a genuine insight into the motivations and hopes of those Jewish activists who thought they were building a better world on the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Book cover of Communist Movement in Iran

Johan Franzen Author Of Red Star Over Iraq: Iraqi Communism Before Saddam

From my list on Middle Eastern communism and leftist movements.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up during the Cold War, I became interested in Communism early. I read about how the Communist International worked to spread the world revolution. Despite its Eurocentrism, Communism appealed to people in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. However, it failed to make meaningful inroads in the Middle East. I wanted to know why. When I trained to become a historian, my curiosity turned towards the Arab world. I decided to combine my two interests and research the history of Arab Communist movements. I discovered a fascinating world of firebrand activists struggling against the tide of nationalism, fascism, and religious bigotry. I hope you find these books as gripping as I did.

Johan's book list on Middle Eastern communism and leftist movements

Johan Franzen Why did Johan love this book?

This is the go-to book for the early Communist movement in Iran. Unlike the Arab countries of the Middle East, where Communism slowly spread in the early decades of the twentieth century, Iran experienced Communism as Soviet foreign policy in a direct manner. Bordering the Soviet Union, northern Iran was the subject of early attempts to spread the Communist creed in the aftermath of the October Revolution. Zabih’s book tells the story of those early inroads and the Iranian activists supporting the new ideology. The early attempts failed, but by the 1940s, the Communist Tudeh Party had emerged as a popular mass party. Zabih’s narrative is lucid, and his research is based on Soviet and Iranian materials. 

Book cover of The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes

Janine Barchas Author Of The Lost Books of Jane Austen

From my list on books, for readers who like the smell of paper.

Why am I passionate about this?

I vividly recall learning about public libraries as a kid: if I signed up for a library card I could take ANY of these books home to read?! From the first, I loved books as physical objects on library shelves—savoring their covers and carefully reading their spines as clues to the stories within. I ended up as a professor of literature who does not just study the words, or texts, of novels (my specialty), but how stories are made into books and circulate in the culture. Everything from graphic design to price can influence our interpretation of a story, even before we read the first word...

Janine's book list on books, for readers who like the smell of paper

Janine Barchas Why did Janine love this book?

This book simply changed the way I do business as a historian and a reader. I love the groundbreaking use of diaries, census records, worker’s memoirs, and library registers to sketch a detailed picture of real books read by real people—not just the official academic record of fine editions with countless mentions of that nameless creature, the “nineteenth-century reader.”

It inspired me to pursue the stories behind the names and comments scratched into abandoned books that find their way onto eBay and the dusty shelves of second-hand bookstores.

By Jonathan Rose,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Now in its second edition, this landmark book provides an intellectual history of the British working classes from the preindustrial era to the twentieth century. Drawing on workers' memoirs, social surveys, library registers, and more, Jonathan Rose discovers which books people read, how they educated themselves, and what they knew. A new preface uncovers the author's journey into labor history, and its rewarding link to intellectual history.


Book cover of Hue and Cry: Stories

David Nicholson Author Of The Garretts of Columbia: A Black South Carolina Family from Slavery to the Dawn of Integration

From my list on race in America.

Why am I passionate about this?

Though I was born in the U.S., I didn’t wind up living here full-time till I was almost 10. The result? I have always been curious about what it means to be an American. In one way or another, the books on my list explore that question. More than that, all (well, nearly all) insist that black history is inextricably intertwined with American history and that American culture is a mulatto culture, a fusion of black and white. After years of making my living as a journalist, editor, and book reviewer, I left newspapers to write fiction and non-fiction, exploring these and other questions.

David's book list on race in America

David Nicholson Why did David love this book?

I still remember reading James Alan McPherson’s book for the first time. I was a senior in high school, one of a handful of black students in what had been an all-white private school. I closed the book, thinking, “Finally. Somebody understands.”

Like me, McPherson had gone from an all-black school, college in his case, to a majority-white school, in his case, Harvard Law. He began to write fiction there. It was the mid-1960s, but instead of hewing to familiar tropes of the time, black student unrest, black self-segregation, and black victimhood, McPherson cast an unflinching eye on blacks and whites interacting for the first time as equals.

He also depicted blacks in their own world lovingly but without sentimentality. I knew these people. McPherson taught me to see and appreciate them afresh.

By James Alan McPherson,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The classic debut collection from Pulitzer Prize winner James Alan McPherson

Hue and Cry is the remarkably mature and agile debut story collection from James Alan McPherson, one of America’s most venerated and most original writers. McPherson’s characters -- gritty, authentic, and pristinely rendered -- give voice to unheard struggles along the dividing lines of race and poverty in subtle, fluid prose that bears no trace of sentimentality, agenda, or apology.

First published in 1968, this collection includes the Atlantic Prize-winning story “Gold Coast” (selected by John Updike for the collection Best American Short Stories of the Century). Now with…


Book cover of Labor's Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America

George Farkas Author Of Industries, Firms, and Jobs: Sociological and Economic Approaches

From my list on understanding American poverty and inequality.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have an unusual personal history. I majored in math in college and aspired to a life as a scientist. However, the civil rights movement and other events of the 1960s and 1970s inspired me to switch and earn a doctorate in sociology. (Which considers itself a science.) My first faculty position, at Yale beginning in 1972, involved a joint appointment in the Sociology Department and the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, which focused on public policy. During the remainder of my career I have worked and published together with economists and sought to do research that uses the perspectives of both fields. 

George's book list on understanding American poverty and inequality

George Farkas Why did George love this book?

Sociologist Cherlin was one of the earliest researchers to become aware of the importance of how, during the second half of the 20th century, during the computer revolution when skill demands of jobs were increasing, the job market collapsed for workers without a college education.

Without a stable job paying a living wage, men and women without a 4-year college education could not see their way to a stable marriage that prepared children for school and life success. This decimated blue-collar families, and led to "culture wars," and working-class resentment of college-educated elites.

Many of these less-educated individuals have left their traditional place in the Democratic party, and come to form Trump's and the Republican's voting base.

By Andrew J. Cherlin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Labor's Love Lost as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Two generations ago, young men and women with only a high-school degree would have entered the plentiful industrial occupations which then sustained the middle-class ideal of a male-breadwinner family. Such jobs have all but vanished over the past forty years, and in their absence ever-growing numbers of young adults now hold precarious, low-paid jobs with few fringe benefits. Facing such insecure economic prospects, less-educated young adults are increasingly forgoing marriage and are having children within unstable cohabiting relationships. This has created a large marriage gap between them and their more affluent, college-educated peers. In Labor’s Love Lost, noted sociologist Andrew…


Book cover of Last Orders

David Clensy Author Of Prayer in Time of War

From my list on memories and poignant reflections on the passing of time.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Wiltshire-based writer with a passion for historical and literary fiction and a fascination for the role of “memory” in the autumn of our lives. My own novel was inspired by conversations with my late grandfather in his final years. But as a journalist for more than 20 years, I had many rich opportunities to talk to the elderly members of our communities–most memorably, taking a pair of D-Day veterans back to the beaches of Normandy. In many ways, memories are the only things we can take with us throughout our lives, carrying both the burden of regrets and the consolation of those we have loved.

David's book list on memories and poignant reflections on the passing of time

David Clensy Why did David love this book?

The novel tells the story of a group of friends who have taken it upon themselves to carry out the “last orders” of their drinking partner, Jack Dodds, to deliver his ashes to the grey seas of Margate. As they drive to the coast, their errand becomes a poignant journey into their collective pasts.

Swift described it as an homage to William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and it follows a similar narrative structure, with chapters titled with the names of the seven key characters, with a shifting narrative perspective to follow the story from each of their eyes.

As a reader, you naturally find your favourite narrative viewpoint. For me, it was Ray, “Lucky Ray,” the obsessive gambler, which for me was the real centre of the novel.

By Graham Swift,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Last Orders as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 1996

The classic edition of one of the 20th Century's finest novels

Four men once close to Jack Dodds, a London butcher, meet to carry out his peculiar last wish: to have his ashes scattered into the sea at Margate. For reasons best known to herself, Jack's widow, Amy, declines to join them . . . On the surface a simple tale of an increasingly bizarre day's outing, this Booker-prize winning, internationally acclaimed novel is a resonant and classic exploration of the complexity and courage of ordinary lives. Intensely local but overwhelmingly universal, faithful to…


Book cover of Martin Eden

F. Scott Service Author Of Playing Soldier

From my list on emotional conflict and post-war survival.

Why am I passionate about this?

Living through the Iraq War compelled me to honestly challenge who I was, what I had believed in, and reshape who I am. One aspect to emerge from that is the belief that there is no good war. War is the worst of all endeavors, born from fundamentally weak minds that are blind to imagination and vision. But while I have had a passion for writing about war and speaking out against it, I feel it’s important for people to look beyond my work as just another veteran writing just another war book. In both of my books, the war is a character more than anything else. 

F.'s book list on emotional conflict and post-war survival

F. Scott Service Why did F. love this book?

While admittedly not a “war” book, Jack London’s masterful novel illustrates notions associated with war and society in an artful way. And he does it within two characters… a truth seeker and a believer in the establishment. From the rich and powerful to the impoverished with no voice, he clearly understood what is behind the masks we don in society. Fantastic read.

By Jack London,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Martin Eden as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The semiautobiographical Martin Eden is the most vital and original character Jack London ever created. Set in San Francisco, this is the story of Martin Eden, an impoverished seaman who pursues, obsessively and aggressively, dreams of education and literary fame. London, dissatisfied with the rewards of his own success, intended Martin Eden as an attack on individualism and a criticism of ambition; however, much of its status as a classic has been conferred by admirers of its ambitious protagonist. Andrew Sinclair's wide-ranging introduction discusses the conflict between London's support of socialism and his powerful self-will. Sinclair also explores the parallels…


Book cover of Lawn Boy

Lori Henriksen Author Of The Winter Loon

From my list on LGBTQ+ themes about the healing power of love.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a retired family therapist, I find that writing and reading stories about emotional journeys no matter our sexual identity, ethnicity, or class has the potential to transform us. A protagonist under threat of persecution who finds healing in the power of love, of family, of community can help us fix ourselves where we are broken. I believe stories can help us sever unhealthy ties to the patterns of past generations. My mother was a closeted lesbian with no family who died when I was nine. Writing how I wished her life could have been helped me heal from childhood trauma. Our ancestors passed the talking stick. We have books.

Lori's book list on LGBTQ+ themes about the healing power of love

Lori Henriksen Why did Lori love this book?

This book increased my empathy.

There’s a lot to absorb here, especially for a white, straight ally of the LGBTQ+ community who doesn’t cut her own grass. It's a novel about the effects of discrimination against race, class, and sexual identity. It’s the authentic experience of a 22-year-old Hispanic man who, against all odds, tries to make an honest living and figure out his place in 21st-century America.

On the banned books list, this novel seems to assault the sensibility of censors who want to protect the young and vulnerable against truth. It must be the language, graphic and raw at times, but in the end, it’s not possible to ban reality. The love of his broken family and cobbled-together community has his back as he embraces his sexuality.

By Jonathan Evison,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

For Mike Munoz, a young Chicano living in Washington State, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work - and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew - he knows that he's got to be the one to shake things up if he's ever going to change his life. But how?

In this funny, angry, touching, and ultimately deeply inspiring novel, bestselling author Jonathan Evison takes the reader into the heart and mind of a young…


Book cover of The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of its Communists, Ba`thists and Free Officers
Book cover of Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948
Book cover of A History of Egyptian Communism: Jews and Their Compatriots in Quest of Revolution

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Interested in the working class, Egypt, and communism?

The Working Class 109 books
Egypt 223 books
Communism 89 books