The most recommended politics books

Katz was in Haiti as an AP stringer at the time of the 2010 earthquake that devastated Port au Prince and was the only non-Haitian reporter to experience that event directly. He went on to do investigative reporting in the aftermath of the quake and was the one to discover that one of the UN deployments had introduced cholera into Haiti by building latrines that drained into the Artibonite River. Katz’s book is sharp and thorough on the damage done to Haiti by both well- and ill-intentioned foreign interference, and also includes a short, clear, efficient, and accurate history of the country from its eighteenth-century founding to the present.

This book taught me about the history of the regulation of abortion in the United States from the 19th century to the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, assuring women’s right to abortion, and its recent Dobbs v. Jackson decision overturning it.

The book also helped me understand why the issue of abortion is never settled in the United States, whereas it is settled in many other countries, including Israel, where I grew up. The book tells the stories of many women who were and continue to be among the leaders in the movement to restrict abortion rights, but it left me wondering why.

As much as I love ancient military history, U.S. history (especially that which isn’t well-known or written about) is one of my most guilty pleasures.

Manly P. Hall studiously uses (and cites his sources) texts and historical records that predate the U.S.A. by hundreds of years to make his case that the founding of America may have been planned and written far earlier than we’ve been led to believe.

From sources claiming that Christopher Columbus may have in fact been a Greek prince who set out purposely to settle this land of plenty that was already a known quantity, to well-known historical figures (Shakespeare, Bacon, etc) writing each other and leaving subtle fingerprints on the earliest settlements of this nation, unnamed academics and intellectuals who seemed to appear at the most important moments to tip the scales when our nation’s founding hung in the balance, and even ancient Greek philosophers… show more.

Fanar Haddad offers his readers a novel analysis of sectarianism in the Arab world – a topic that has been receiving increasing attention in academic research on the region. Haddad provides a deep theoretical analysis of the concept of sectarianism. He shows that sectarian identity, like all identities, is multi-dimensional and multi-layered, operating on various levels: religious, subnational, national, and transnational. He aptly demonstrates that sectarian identities are contextual; they are constantly negotiated through interactions within, and conversations with, a socio-political setting and the relentless flux of historical change. Haddad devotes a full chapter to the question of sectarian identity and the contestation of the state in Iraq between 2003 and 2018. Haddad’s analysis is indispensable for understanding the various dimensions of the problem of sectarianism in the Middle East.

I adore this book. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class might be better known, but his book that I return to time and time again, his most brilliant, most detailed, most political, is Whigs and Hunters. More than any other book, this gets absolutely to the heart of how power was practiced in early eighteenth century. Against the protests of poor forest dwellers, the British state in one swoop made more acts punishable by death than the rest of the statute combined. If you want to understand how and why inequality persists, and how foodstuffs became a battleground between the rich and poor, this is essential.

Maggie Nelson just dazzles me. Her prose is so sharp and thoughtful, her thinking so idiosyncratically brilliant, her images filled with light. The Argonauts is both memoir and inquiry, a story of how Nelson and her partner Harry, who is in the midst of a gender transition, became parents, a story fraught with obstacles and veined with wisdom. Nelson’s voice mixes erudition, visceral power—especially when she writes about sex and the body—and formal innovation. The Argonauts caused a splash when it came out, and for good reason—its unflinchingly honest portrayal of one queer couple’s creation of family together is beautiful, brave, and yes, deeply fierce. 

A ridiculously fun and eerily prescient folktale, about the rise of a Robin Hood figure and the community that rallies around her in a droughted, post-warming Portland, Oregon, I can basically never not recommend this book. Like Brown Girl in the Ring, this is one of the books that made me want to read and write about speculative community-building and environmental justice. Parzybok's clever, inviting prose makes this substantial novel a deceptively fast and joyful read, and I'm never not sad when it's over.

Fascism and Communism purported to explain all social and political phenomena and, on that basis, justified their authoritarian or totalitarian rule. The term ‘fascist’ tends to be loosely applied to intolerant and autocratic political behaviour, but the outstandingly lucid, and highly readable, book by Robert Paxton not only surveys fascism in practice – in Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany and in fascist movements and parties in many different countries – it also shows what its distinctive components are. What he calls the ‘mobilizing passions’ of fascism include the glorification of war and violence, expansionism, racism, a fixation on national solidarity, rejection of the legitimacy of diverse interests and values within a society, and, not least, a cult of the heroic leader, with the leader’s instincts counting for more than reasoned, evidence-based argument.

If you’re curious about what was happening in Germany throughout the war, you’ll love Albert Speer’s memoir, which provides a unique, inside look at Hitler and his closest associates before and after the Allies landed in Normandy. Speer was Hitler’s architect and paints a unique picture of Hitler from the start of the war. It also includes a wonderful series of pictures at every stage.

If you’re fascinated by The Second World War, this book is a must for your library, as it is in mine. I look at the pictures over and over and delight in seeing the principal players who made those years memorable. It’s a book that will stay in your head for a long time.

I was taken back in time reading this account of the World’s Fair along with the cultural and political background Tirella provided. It gave me a broader view of the seismic societal changes that were starting to hit the country.

I also enjoyed another take on the fair–everyone has an opinion, even if it doesn’t necessarily match my own. World’s fairs are cultural Petri dishes, telling us much about the society we live in, and this book proves it.