shared works in radical history

Shared works -- Interesting to note that Emma's essays is the number one shared work here! And Paul Avrich and the IWW are the next two.

What are the critical works for radical history? Is our "most commonly shared books" a good indicator?

I am currently reading around various events in the fifties through the sixties, particularly Suharto's coup and its effect on the Cultural Revolution . . . it was only after looking at various Trotskyist analyses, particularly Mandel, that things began making sense to me. So from that perspective, and from that of understanding Stalinist/Maoist policies in general, I think some sort of history of the various Trotskyist branches is important.

A lot of people have recommended Deutscher's biography trilogy, but I haven't read it, and so can't recommend it.

Strike! by Jeremy Brecher is a must not just for an understanding of radical history but specificaly for a trajectory of the American working-class at its most combative and revolutinary moments.

Coming to this late, I know...

I'd say that the shared books in this groups are skewed rather strongly toward anarchism and away from history. In any list of critical works in radical history, I'd have to include E.P. Thompson's Making of the English Working Class, which is certainly among the foundational works of radical history.

Strike! is definitely very good; I have a few others hitting the 1930s strikes that were useful.

Well, Howard Zinn most certainly belongs here!

jacr@4:

Yes, I think that is just a side effect of so many anarchists in the group. There aren't any actual history books in there at all, are there?

Strike! is history. Also I tend to think of biographies as history through a first-person lens.

I know this is late in the day but I have just joined and off my own shelf there's Peter Linebaugh The London Hanged, Marcus Rediker Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and Villains of all Nations, then jointly with Linebaugh there's The Many Headed Hydra, Silvia Federici Caliban and the Witch, James Holstun Ehud's Dagger, Christopher Hill The World Turned Upside Down; an excellent account of African - American communists in the 1930s, Robin Kelley Hammer and Hoe. I can hunt arouind and find more American stuff too.

it's never too late to respond on a thread! love these recommendatiosn -- i had forgotten about Hammer and Hoe.

Another great radical history in graphis style The Wobblies edited by Paul Buhle

Labor's Giant Step, by Art Preis