The most recommended books about anarchism

I found I could not turn away from Jones’s unsparing look at the life and times of Lucy Parsons, even though I’ve long been familiar with this period of American history.

Parsons was an anarchist agitator who worked and lived across the color line in gilded-age America. But she was also a reckless if savvy provocateur whose actions did lasting harm to many. Jones follows Parsons’s life from the slave south to Reconstruction-era Texas to the industrializing North.

Relentlessly researched and brilliantly told, the story is at once illuminating and deeply disturbing.  

For decades, Jack Loeffler and Ed Abbey were best friends. Nearly fifteen years after Abbey’s death, Loeffler wrote about their friendship and their time exploring the Desert Southwest in this beautiful biographical memoir.

Loeffler takes us on some of the countless backpacking trips the two men went on while also revealing the many complexities of Abbey. This beautiful book lets us lean in and listen to Loeffler and Abbey talking about anarchism and environmentalism around so many campfires. I had the pleasure of interviewing Loeffler, and this book sounds so authentic to him.

It is smart, passionate, and kind, just like Loeffler is. 

Craib’s Renegade uses a biographical approach to explore larger cultural and transnational politics—this time in early twentieth-century Chile. Again, migration—so crucial to the history of Latin American anarchism—plays a central role in understanding the multinational dimensions of anarchism in countries across the region. Craib uses the life and death of the anarchist poet Domingo Gómez Rojas, along with his friends and comrades, to explore the Chilean anarchists and their relations with student rebels. The book illustrates how anarchists in Chile created urban “transnational communities” of anarchists born in Santiago, anarchists who moved to the capital, and anarchists who immigrated to Chile. They then used their culture and multinational experiences to forge transnational connections beyond Chile.

Durruti is a massive 800-page biography of a Spanish anarchist that carried “the future in is heart and a gun in each pocket” and, at the same time, portrays the twists and turns of the Spanish Revolution and the millions of people who made it. A model of how to place a radical, working-class life within a broader context, Durruti is also a blow-by-blow account of a revolution and its battles, trials, and upheavals. I shamelessly tried to re-create such a gripping biography when writing my own book. Who would have thought an 800-page brick could be such a page-turner?

One of the first political thrillers, and still one of the best, this tale is based on a true story about an anarchist devoted to blowing up the Greenwich observatory—if only his family will stop getting in the way. It portrays spies as not the superhumans of most thrillers but ordinary men bumbling through their private lives while trying to steer the public toward their grander schemes. A welcome antidote to the superhero model we see in James Bond and 24.

Soares’ very funny novel bridges my focus on anarchist culture and transnational anarchism. Soares’ title character is an anarchist born of a Brazilian woman. His anarchist politics are always on display as he sets out to assassinate tyrannous figures around the world. For those looking for a sympathetic story of anarchists, our clumsy, error-prone, would-be assassin does not fit the bill. However, his popping up around the world at times of key global events is bizarre and ultimately quite entertaining. If nothing else, Twelve Fingers is a reminder of how even the best-laid plans with noble intents can go disastrously astray.

My favorite of Miller’s books, Tropic of Capricorn is based on Miller’s life in Brooklyn in the 1920s. It’s a dizzying stream-of-consciousness array that sweeps you along. Miller’s occasional poignant reminiscences about the magic of his boyhood and friendships contrast with the soul-sucking realities of adulthood and workplace bureaucracy that try to stamp out the embers of wonder and passion like a boot heel. Like most of his books, Capricorn celebrates the absurd miracle of consciousness. Miller’s influence on my education as a writer was indispensable. His books didn’t serve so much as a template as how to write, as how to be a writer, specifically how to observe and appreciate the vast madness of the world, reject conformity, and the embrace the anarchist spirit of artistic creation.

It was thick book, a satire, and new translation from Czech, and I loved the illustrations, the setting, and that the new translation was restoring all of the salty language excised from the original/bowdlerized translation.

It’s the story of a simple dog breeder, presumed to be an imbecile (an acceptable term at the time), drafted into the army and his adventures making his way to WWI—always outwitting his (imbecilic) superiors and betters along the way.

It’s satirical, hilarious, often scatological, and the best part is that the book ends (because the author died) before he gets to the actual war, so we get to imagine Švejk surviving the war and moving to Florida in the ‘20s to raise Greyhounds or whatever.

It’s really good, in fact, I might just read it again.

The Journey Home is a fitting sequel to Desert Solitaire in which Abbey makes a compelling case for saving what remains of the western United States. A long-time “desert rat,” Abbey lives his message of anarchism with a profound sense of humor. My exposure to Abbey’s writings while I was in college contributed to my love of the American West, where I grew up, and also contributed to my desire to pursue anarchism.

Kropotkin was a remarkable man with remarkable ideas and this book, written in Brighton and first published in 1892 remains a gem in the canon of historic anarchist literature.

In the 130 years since it was published, communism has demonstrably failed (China is less communist, more sinister state gangsterism, like North Korea); socialism looks to be on its last legs. On the left, then, there is only anarchism remaining. This is nothing like the idiotic street antics of modern youth – more nihilism than any coherent political position – but thoughtful sets of ideas around governance without the presence of a central authority.

If it is anything, anarchism is rooted in a concept of collectivist, cooperative, local communities. This is what The Price of Bread explores. Yes, it is wildly idealistic, utopian in intent. It was written before the horrors awaiting us in the 20th century, epitomised by Lenin,… show more.