Book recommendations by RTSG

The team gives you reading recommendations...

A major problem that haunts online political communities is the lack of in-depth and broad reading. This list offers a diverse range of books covering ancient, Middle Eastern, European, American and modern histories; classical and neoclassical economics; political history, science, and theology; hermeneutics; ontologies; media and art critique; mathematics; robotics; science; biology; genetics; virology; military science; fiction, and more. Every member of the team has provided their personal 20 recommendations, so be sure to read all the suggestions and save this article for future readings.

Ahmad

• Anti-Dühring, by Friedrich Engels

• Being and Time, by Martin Heidegger

• Communist Postscript, by Boris Groys

• Five Essays on Philosophy, by Mao

• Fourth Political Theory, by Aleksandr Dugin

• German Ideology, by Friedrich Engels

• Ibn Khaldun's Prolegomena, by Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun

• Imagined Communities, by Benedict Anderson

• Intelligent Materialism, by Evald Ilyenkov

• Lenin, by Lars Lih

• Liberalism: A Counter-History, by Dominico Lasurdo

• Outline of a Phenomenology of Right, by Alexandre Kojève

• Question Concerning Technology in China, by Yuk Hui

• Sovereign Collection, by Carl Schmitt

• Spectres of Marx, by Jacques Derrida

• State & Revolution, Vladimir Lenin

• Sublime Object of Ideology, by Slavoj Žižek

• Super-Imperialism, by Michael Hudson

• Total Art of Stalinism, by Boris Groys

• Unknown Cultural Revolution, by Dongping Han

August

• Plato: Complete Works - Plato, ed. by John Cooper

• Deep Time of the Media - Siegfried Zielinski

• Understanding Media - Marshal McLuhan

• The Fourth Industrial Revolution - Klaus Schwab

• Journey to the End of the Night - Louis-Ferdinand Céline

• Introduction to Metaphysics - Martin Heidegger

• Lacan in Contexts - David Macey

• Grundrisse - Karl Marx

• On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects - Gilbert Simondon

• Introduction to the Reading of Hegel - Alexandre Kojève

• Theory of the Partisan - Carl Schmitt

• Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine - Norbert Wiener, Doug Hill, Sanjoy Mitter, 2019 edition

• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - MIT Press

• Almost Zero - Vladislav Surkov

• Generation Existential - Ethan Kleinberg

• Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

• Dominic Cumming’s blog

• Cyclonopedia - Reza Negarestani

• Art Power - Boris Groys

• The Concept of the Political - Carl Schmitt

• The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Chen

• Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners by Roland Boer

• The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism by Michael Hudson

• Deng Xiaoping and the Cultural Revolution by Deng Rong

• The East is still Red by Carlos Martinez

• The Beginning of the End: Lessons of the Soviet Collapse by Carlos Martinez

• The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping by Deng Xiaoping

• The Selected Works of Chairman Mao by Chairman Mao Zedong

• The Dynamics of Economic Growth: Policy Insights from Comparative Analyses in Asia by Vu Minh Kuong

• Productivity, Vol. 3 Information Technology and the American Growth Resurgence by Dale Jorgenson

• The Economics of Productivity by Dale Jorgenson

• Dynamic Forces in Capitalist Development: A Long-Run Comparative View. by Angus Maddison

• Is China still Socialist? A Marxist critique of János Kornai’s analysis of China by Heiko Khoo

• Marxism and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics by Jin Huiming

• China's Great Road by John Ross

• Ten Crises, the Political Economy of China's Development (1949 - 2020) by Wen Tiejun

• Power and Primacy: A History of Western Intervention in the Asia-Pacific. by A.B. Abrams

• The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism by Carlos Garrido

• Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by Ezra F. Vogel

• The Political and Economic History of China (1949 - 1976) by Hu Angang

• Mao and the Cultural Revolution (Volume 1-3) by Hu Angang

Mak

• Alliance that Never Was, Carley

• Stalin's Gamble, Carley

• Spectre of War, Haslam

• The Soviets, the Munich and the Coming of World War II, Ragsdale

• The Soviet Union and Origins of World War 2, Roberts

• Mission to Moscow, Davies

• Maisky's Diary, Gorodetsky

• The Road to Terror, Getty

• Life and Terror, Thurston

• Fraud Famine and Fascism, Tottle

• Natural Disaster and Human Actions, Tauger

• Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, Tauger

• Stalin's Constitution, Lomb

• Stalingrad, Glantz

• History and Critique of a Black Legend, Losurdo

• Nomos of Earth, Schmitt

• Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn

• Against Method, Feyerabend

• For a Left Populism, Mouffe

• The Protestant Ethic, Weber

Nasser

• The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Taleb

• Social and Economic Networks by Matthew O Jackson

• Marx's Economics: a dual theory of growth and value by Michio Morishima

• A Mathematician’s Apology by GH Hardy

• Against Method by Paul Feyerabend

• Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk

• The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John Mearshimer

• Heidegger and the Ideology of War: Community, Death, and the West by Domenico Losurdo

• Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution by Robert Allen

• The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan's Great Recession by Richard C Koo

• Nietzsche, Volume 1: The Will to Power as Art by Martin Heidegger

• The Impossible State by Wael Hallaq

• Planning Problems in the USSR: The Contribution of Mathematical Economics to Their Solution 1960-1971 by Michael Ellman

• America by Jean Baudrillard

• Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms by David JC Mackay

• Islam in Liberalism by Joseph Massad

• Nietzsche: The Aristocratic Rebel by Domenico Losurdo

• The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective by Robert Allen

• Probability Theory: The Logic of Science by ET Jaynes

• The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse by Steven D Smith

Louis

• Debt: The First 5000 Years, by David Graeber

• El mito de la Izquierda; El mito de la Derecha, by Gustavo Bueno

• NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe, by Daniele Ganser

• Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola

• The Forms of Negation: Metre and Metaphysics in the Versification of T.S. Eliot

• Crusade or class war : the Spanish military revolt, by José Manuel Gallegos Rocafull

• The Fascist Offensive: And the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class Against Fascism, by Georgi Dimitrov

• Aeons without History — Thesis on the Metacartel, by Vincent Garton and Edmund Berger

• The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity, by Eugene McCarraher

• The art of law-giving, by James Harrington

• Spiral of Violence, by Hélder Câmara

• Law of Freedom in a Platform, by Gerrard Winstanley

• On Wealth and Poverty, John Chrysostom

• Ownership: Early Christian Teaching, Charles Avila

• Camilo Torres, Liberation Theology, and Marxism, Marco Gabbas

• Iberofonia y Socialismo, Santiago Armesilla

• On the History of Early Christianity, by Friedrich Engels

• The English Revolution 1640, by Christopher Hill

• The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, by Christopher Hill

• Oliver Cromwell, by John Morrill

Rares

• The Theory of a Multipolar World, Alexander Dugin

• Red Theology: on the Christian Communist tradition, Roland Boer

• Criticism of Heaven, Roland Boer

• Dialectics of Abstract & Concrete, Evald Ilyenkov

• Soviet Psychology: Dialectical Logic, Evald Ilyenkov

• The Total Art of Stalinism, Boris Groys

• Land and Sea: A World-Historical Meditation, Carl Schmitt

• Constitutional Theory, Carl Schmitt

• History of the Three Internationals, William Z Foster

• Collapse of Antiquity, Michael Hudson

• Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, Louis Althusser

• Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union, Vladislav M. Zubok

• Textbook of Marxist Philosophy, M. Shirokov

• Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Otto Wille Kuusinen

• Dialectical Materialism, Maurice Cornforth

• The Science of Logic, G.W.F Hegel

• The Philosophy of History, G.W.F Hegel

• Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical History, Domenico Losurdo

• Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith

• A People’s History of England, A.L. Morton

Rev

• Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 - 4 (Penguin Classics) by Karl Marx

• A Companion To Marx's Capital by David Harvey

• Reclaiming Marx's 'Capital': A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency by Andrew Kliman

• An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital by Michael Heinrich

• The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes

• Nonfinancial Economics: The Case for Shorter Hours of Work by Eugene McCarthy

• Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings, 1987–2007 by Nick Land

• Free time : the forgotten American Dream by Benjamin Hunnicutt

• Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty

• Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber

• The Global Minotaur by Yanis Varoufakis

• Law of the Accumulation and Breakdown by Henryk Grossman

• Money and totality by Fred Moseley

• An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army by Fredric Jameson

• The Ontology of Finance: Price, Power, and the Arkhederivative by Suhail Malik

• The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century by Steven Watts

• Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression by Robin Kelley

• Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist by Harry Haywood

• The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village by Dongping Han

• Dialectics of Nature by Frederick Engels

Ruslan

• Lamarck's Signature: How Retrogenes Are Changing Darwin's Natural Selection Paradigm, by E. J. Steele.

• Plague Time: The New Germ Theory of Disease, by P. W. Ewald.

• Evolution of Infectious Disease, by P. W. Ewald.

• Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy, 1905-1953, by Simon Ings.

• Lysenko’s Ghost: Epigenetics and Russia, by Loren Graham.

• Bees: The Biology of the Bee Colony & the Achievements of Bee Science, by Iosif Khalifman.

• The River: A Journey Back to the Source of HIV and AIDS, by Edward Hooper.

• Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature, by R. Lewontin, S. Rose, and L. Kamin.

• Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, by Cixin Liu.

• Resistance to the Shah: Landowners and the Ulama in Iran, by Mohammad Gholi Majd.

• Great Britain & Reza Shah: The Plunder of Iran, 1921–1941, by Mohammad Gholi Majd.

• Persia in World War I and Its Conquest by Great Britain, by Mohammad Gholi Majd.

• The Great Famine and Genocide in Persia, 1917–1919, by Mohammad Gholi Majd.

• Iran Under Allied Occupation in World War II: The Bridge to Victory & a Land of Famine, by Mohammad Gholi Majd.

• Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran, by Parvaneh Pourshariati.

• Iran at War: Interactions with the Modern World and the Struggle with Imperial Russia, by Maziar Behrooz.

• The Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831-1896, by Abbas Amanat.

• The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding, by Eric Nelson.

• Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon.

• The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World from the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests, by G. E. M. de Ste. Croix.

Writer 9

• Karl Marx, Grundrisse

• Ernest Hemingway, For whom the Bell Tolls

• Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms

• Nikolai Ostrovsky, How the Steel Was Tempered

• Herodotus, The Histories

• G.W.F Hegel, Science of Logic

• Friedrich Engels, The Peasant's War in Germany

• Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

• Dongping Han, The Unknown Cultural Revolution

• Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander

• Plato, The Republic

• Vladimir Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism

• Mao Zedong, On Contradiction and On Practice

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

• Herman Melville, Moby Dick

• Joseph Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR

• Carl von Clausewitz, On War

• Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature

• Joseph Stalin, Dialectical and Historical materialism

• Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars

Seraph

• Hinterland, Phil A Neel

• The Imjin War, Samuel Hawley

• The Influence of sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, Alfred Thayer Mahan

• Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides

• The Yankee and Cowboy War, Carl Oglesby

• Occult Roots of Nazism, Goodrick Clarke

• Hammer of the Gods, David Luhrssen

• Hitler’s Beneficiaries, Götz Aly

• Trading With the Enemy, Charles Higham

• The Secret Hitler, Lothar Machtan

• The Israel Lobby, Mearshimer

• America’s Protectionist Takeoff, Micheal Hudson

• Bodyguard of Lies, Anthony Cave Brown

• Debt: the first 5000 years, David Graeber

• Virtue Hoarders, Catherine Liu

• Inheritance of Rome, Chris Wickham

• The Collapse of Antiquity, Micheal Hudson

• Metaphysics, Aristotle

• The Proud Tower, Barbara W. Tuchman

• Never Call Retreat, Bruce Catton

Writer 12

• The Republic, by Plato

• The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli

• Liberalism: A Counter-History, by Domenico Losurdo

• The State and Revolution, by Vladimir Lenin

• On Contradiction, by Mao Zedong

• Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance, by Michael Hudson

• ...and forgive them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year, by Michael Hudson

• The Sublime Object of Ideology, by Slavoj Žižek

• The Fourth Political Theory, by Aleksander Dugin

• The Persians: Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern Iran, by Homa Katouzian

• The Shahnameh, by Abolqasem Ferdowsi

• Iran at War: Interactions with the Modern World and the Struggle with Imperial Russia, by Maziar Behrooz

• The Great Famine and Genocide in Persia, 1917-1919, by Mohammad Gholi Majd

• From Qajar to Pahlavi: Iran, 1919-1930, by Mohammad Gholi Majd

• Iran Between Two Revolutions, by Ervand Abrahamian

• A History of Modern Iran, by Ervand Abrahamian

• Resistance to the Shah: Landowners and Ulama in Iran, by Mohammad Gholi Majd

• Both Eastern and Western: An Intellectual History of Iranian Modernity, by Afshin Matin-Asgari

• Westoxification, by Jalal Al-e Ahmad

• The Iran-Iraq War, by Pierre Razoux