100 Books Like Banana Cultures

To get through over a hundred books on my History PhD comprehensive exams list, I allowed myself a maximum of one reading day plus a maximum of one double-sided cue card per book.

Jeff Gould crammed so much super cool theory about populism and revolution, workers, and women into his beautifully written book that he got four cue cards and three days! Gould explains that the first Somoza (named “Anastasio”) rose to power largely thanks to US influence, but, once there, he built his own following and passed some remarkably progressive reforms, at least on paper.

The book changed the way I think about populism and revolution in Latin America, completely inspiring the PhD research that became my first book and my current project on rural populism in Brazil.
To Lead as Equals shows how powerful sugar workers can be when rural sugar-cane cutters unite with industrial sugar-factory workers, and… show more.

I came across Margaret Randall’s Sandino’s Daughters Revisited while researching my MA thesis on women in the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution, and I love to use it with students since it tells a fascinating history through individuals’ stories.

The book is a really interesting follow-up to Sandino’s Daughters, which was based on interviews Randall did before the triumph of the revolution. Here, Randall is interviewing many of the same women after the Sandinistas lost democratic elections in 1990, offering lots of insights to readers about the complex causes for the triumph and downfall of the revolution.

The twelve women came from many different backgrounds, including: Diana Espinoza, who worked for an employee-owned factory during the revolutionary period; Daisy Zamora, a poet who served as vice-minister of culture during the revolution, and Dora Maria Vidaluz Meneses, the daughter of a Somozan official who shares some really moving stories about her time living… show more.

This was a really amazing book to read with students in my graduate course on the social history of commodities.

It contributes some really original theory about power and race, the peasantry, politics, and other major topics that those more inclined towards sociology or political science would appreciate. It is a little like the Dominican Republic version of Jeff Gould’s To Lead as Equals on Nicaragua or Gladys McCormick’s The Logic of Compromise: Authoritarianism, Betrayal, and Revolution in Rural Mexico, 1935-1965.

I am constantly telling students and colleagues about the fascinating arguments presented in Foundations of Despotism, which echoes Gould’s evidence that dictators cannot remain in power through violence, alone.

Turits’ interviews with peasants and letters that he found in the Dominican national archives from humble rural peoples show that after first coming to power in the early 1930s—ostensibly purely because of US support—the Trujillo regime built a rural base… show more.

Weavers of Revolution is still my favorite "history from below” book to use in classes about Latin American revolutions.

It reads like a novel, bringing readers into the story by focusing on the workers of Chile’s largest cotton mill and highlighting their activities before and during the socialist Salvador Allende regime (1970-73). The Lebanese Yarur family used ethnic networks to build a successful economic enterprise that endured for many decades, but when the socialist Allende was elected, workers rejected paternalism and took over the factory to run it themselves.

Winn, building on interviews with workers as well as Allende regime officials, beautifully communicates the complexities of the era. Allende and his advisors urged workers to wait for gradual change—also urging rural workers who were seizing plantations to await formal land reform—but urban and rural workers executed factory take-overs and land occupations, radicalizing the revolution from below.

Weavers of Revolution joins… show more.

Its central thesis is that the deficiencies and environmental harm of major efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are being ignored, so that the privileged and elite can continue to live in comfort and affluence. The authors present evidence that advocates for alternative energy such as wind and solar greatly overestimate the potential of these sources to replace fossil fuel energy. At the same time, the development of wind and solar power has harmful environmental impacts, including the mining necessary to obtain rare earth minerals, the decimation of wilderness both in the process of obtaining minerals, and widely implementing wind and solar installations. The undue optimism associated with these activities makes it unnecessary for those who are already privileged to consider adopting a much less consumptive lifestyle.

The impending doom of climate change has been stressing me out for over a decade. It feels like my son will inherit a world that resembles the dystopian futures of Mad Max or Blade Runner. But the future we’re entering into will be more nuanced than that. 

This book helped me realize that the future may not be as bleak as I had once imagined. The environmental alarmists may have good intentions, but their efforts might be causing more harm than good.

A welcome corrective to the trend of X number of things you can do in your personal life to save the Earth that won't threaten the rule of greedy polluters over the economy and government, Price's lighthearted book welcomes the reader with a smile but strikes hard against propaganda from corporate polluters while she stands up for climate justice. To help readers make a real difference, as opposed to doing things that feel helpful but really aren't like buying a Prius, Price does actually offer a few personal life changes, like buying less stuff or buying higher quality stuff at lower quantity. But most of her ideas are about thinking differently about the environment--such as Redefine Economy or even Redefine Extremism (greedheads, not environmentalists, are the real extremists). Or getting active in public policy--from the strikingly simple "Vote!" to "Join up locally--government & economy R us."

This anthology makes the case that an empire of extraction has existed from the dawn of the colonial era until deep into the 21st Century. The essays in the “Health and Environmental Justice” section are both fascinating and disturbing. And how could they not be disturbing with such words as these in chapter titles? “Uranium Mine and Mine Tailings.” “Arsenic Pollution.” “Quebec Asbestos.” Nearly every chapter in this section emphasizes the impact on indigenous populations with the chapter title on the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, being particularly stark. It opens with this: “If the Rivers Ran South.”

McCook traces the global devastation of coffee trees around the world that began in 1869. His work is not just about coffee, but about the ways in which pathogens are spread by air, ships, birds, and even by humans tracking it into remote sites on their boots. So the book is about coffee but about much more:  why do certain pathogens explode all of a sudden; how have farmers tried to cope with the fungus, which destroys entire trees and whole farms; what is the genetic stock of coffee now; why has rust suddenly appeared in Latin America in recent years; and what experiments are going on to try to defeat rust? Stuart, by the way, is a wonderful guy to meet and talk to about coffee and its pests. His book is absolutely readable!

A few years ago, I took a road trip from the East Coast to the Southwestern United States, camping in my car and exploring New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. This was the first book I had queued up in my audiobooks for the trip.

The author lives in Utah and explores her love affair with the arid, desolate landscapes of the Southwest as she grieves accruing environmental and personal losses. It’s a poignant, poetic book by an environmental activist that deepened my own commitment to the connection between love of the earth and a willingness to stand up for it.