Recommended History Books

Here in the US, we are taught literally whitewashed propaganda as history. US socioeconomics were founded on land and resource theft, genocide, and chattel slavery enacted by white supremacists. It sustains itself on all of those to this day, but has gotten better at obfuscating it through indoctrination starting in childhood, transforming the plantations into corporations and prisons, and using cult tactics to control the population. The US Founding Fathers took feudalism and basically created a distributed aristocracy (Federalist Papers 10) in which white men could rule mini-kingdoms through the theft of land, genocide of its original Indigenous inhabitants, and enslavement of African Peoples in order to use their forced labor to strip the land of its resources.

I’ve compiled a list of history books at this link – these are written by historians who used primary and secondary sources, not recycled information from the last version of the history textbook that the publisher and a few states schlep together to fit a narrative and make another buck, as they sell propaganda tomes every few years to school systems.

You MUST know this history in order to understand our present and to build a future worth living in.

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		Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism & The Overthrow Of Communism We’ve been indoctrinated in the US to fear and loathe Communism and Socialism, and it’s important that we all understand why that is the case. Michael Parenti shares the history Communism and Anti-Communism in the US, showing how the ruling class has used propaganda to get us to believe that Capitalism is a just Democracy. It’s important to know why we’ve been manipulated to conform to these ideologies and why they are reinforced in our media.
		Stamped From The Beginning: The Definitive History Of Racist Ideas In America Every racist idea, trope, stereotype – they’re all rooted in slavery and the justifications that white landowners made for enslaving Black people. It’s vital to identify these, as many are insidious and not easily recognized when you’ve been conditioned to see those as the status quo.
		Addicted To War: Why The US Can’t Kick Militarism 74 page history book written in easy to read comic-book style. Extensive sourcing in Index. History that is deliberately omitted from our history textbooks in order to hide Capitalism’s underbelly.
		A People’s History of American Empire 288 page history book, also in comic form, with extensive sourcing in Index. Based on Howard Zinn’s writings – an even deeper dive into history deliberately omitted from textbooks. This knowledge challenges the propaganda we’ve been taught in history & civics classes.
		Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your US History Textbook Got Wrong James W. Loewen has been reviewing US history textbooks since 1995 and evaluating their contents against primary sources. This book is an excellent follow-up to the two comic form history books. He explains what the textbooks got wrong, as well as WHY that is intentional, and the outcome of this manipulation of history.
		Huey P. Newton: Revolutionary Suicide Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton’s autobiography is one of the most life-changing books I’ve ever read. Don’t let the title fool you: this isn’t about a death wish – it’s about the people and values you are willing to risk your life protecting. In my opinion, a must-read, ESPECIALLY if you come from white/European Settler culture. This covers quite a bit of history of The Black Panther Party, which Huey co-founded.
		A People’s History Of the United States An examination of the actual history of the United States – not the whitewashed American mythology that our classroom history books contain. Reading this will help you understand why the US and its socioeconomics are structured the way that they are, and how it impacts us on both systemic and individual levels. It will help you to understand how both the US and Capitalism are built on theft, enslavement, and genocide, and how that causes present day injustices.
		Blood In My Eye Prison letters and writing of George L. Jackson – a member of The Black Panther Party, and Black Marxist-Leninist. This is a mix of both history and theory from one of the most brilliant theoreticians in human history. If you’re looking for “how to” information on addressing the white supremacy, racism, imperialism and other oppressions that are vital to Capitalism and the US itself, this is essential reading.
		Soledad Brother George L. Jackson’s prison letters – correspondence between him and family members, comrades, his attorney, and others. You will learn so much from this collection of his writings – he saw the system as it exists and helps break through the conditioning we’ve all been subjected to under Capitalism, particularly in the US.
		The Assassination Of Fred Hampton: How The FBI And The Chicago Police Murdered A Black Panther Written by one of Fred Hampton’s attorneys, Jeffrey Haas, this book explores the events leading to the coordinated murder by law enforcement of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, both Black Panthers. Four other Black Panthers were also shot by police in the apartment. Fred was drugged by an informant who worked as his trusted bodyguard, and was not conscious when a pig stood over him in bed and fatally shot him. If you don’t know this story, along with Fred’s work and life before it was cut short by the US government, you should really check this out. It will help you understand how the Capitalists target anyone they perceive as a threat to their continued rule over us all, which is important to know as we struggle to bring an end to the unjust, oppressive system they’ve grown wildly rich under while people are still not getting their basic life needs met as a consequence of that racism and greed.
		The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & The Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World This book will shock many Americans, who are, by design of our own US government, kept in the dark about the atrocities committed by US intelligence agencies, our military, and private military contractors in order to prevent Socialist governments abroad from existing and from succeeding when they do manage to take shape against the adversarial opposition posed by the US Empire. In the US we’ve all been raised to believe that “Socialism/Communism just doesn’t work” but the truth is that it does, it is popular with the people living under that kind of government, but it presents a direct threat to the Capitalists who rule the US and who want to continue using the US Empire’s might to exploit other nations, their people, and their natural resources to enrich a minority of billionaires and multi-millionaires at the expense of the rest of us. The author brings the receipts to demonstrate how the anticommunist methods used in Jakarta, Indonesia have been repeated all over the world by the US government. This is history you will not be taught in school, by design.