Here are 81 books that Harry Bridges fans have personally recommended if you like
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When I was nine, I watched the Air Force dig a giant hole outside of my hometown to install a Minuteman Two nuclear missile to protect us from Soviet attack. I wanted to know what the Communists had against me personally, and the childhood question turned into a lifelong quest. I have lived in post-communist countries, consulted the Party files in the Comintern Archives in Moscow, interviewed dozens of former and current members of the Communist Party, and earned a PhD in the history of Communism from Georgetown University. On the way, I met memorable people, uncovered secrets, and experienced an amazing journey. I invite you to join me.
All right, this is not a book on American Communism, but you need to see the big picture. I have read every book that tries to explain the history of world communism, and this is the best I have encountered.
I like this book because it is not a triumphal account of the fall of communism but a genuine attempt to understand the movement’s appeal to millions of people. Another strength is that the book does not end with the fall of the Soviet Union but with the robust survival of communism in China.
From an award-winning historian, a new global history of Communism
When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the world was certain that Communism was dead. Today, three decades later, it is clear that it was not. While Russia may no longer be Communist, Communism and sympathy for Communist ideas have proliferated across the globe.
In To Overthrow the World, Sean McMeekin investigates the evolution of Communism from a seductive ideal of a classless society into the ruling doctrine of tyrannical regimes. Tracing Communism's ascent from theory to practice, McMeekin ranges from Karl Marx's writings to the rise and fall of the…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
When I was nine, I watched the Air Force dig a giant hole outside of my hometown to install a Minuteman Two nuclear missile to protect us from Soviet attack. I wanted to know what the Communists had against me personally, and the childhood question turned into a lifelong quest. I have lived in post-communist countries, consulted the Party files in the Comintern Archives in Moscow, interviewed dozens of former and current members of the Communist Party, and earned a PhD in the history of Communism from Georgetown University. On the way, I met memorable people, uncovered secrets, and experienced an amazing journey. I invite you to join me.
For decades, historians argued over the extent of Communist Party involvement in Soviet Espionage directed at the United States. The opening of the Soviet archives and the release of the VENONA project decodes of communication between the Soviet Consulate in New York and Moscow finally provided a solid answer.
Of the many books written about the subject, I like Sibley’s best. She takes her readers through the facts of the most famous cases and gives equal attention to the points of view of all the main actors. I particularly like her descriptions of early Soviet networks devoted primarily to industrial espionage.
When the United States established diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union in 1933, it did more than normalize relations with the new Bolshevik state - it opened the door to a parade of Russian spies. In the 1930s and 1940s, Soviet engineers and technicians, under the guise of international cooperation, reaped a rich harvest of intelligence from our industrial plants. Factory layouts, aircraft blueprints, fuel formulas - all were grist for the Soviet espionage mill. And that, as Katherine Sibley shows, was just the beginning. While most historians date the onset of the Cold War with American fears of Soviet…
When I was nine, I watched the Air Force dig a giant hole outside of my hometown to install a Minuteman Two nuclear missile to protect us from Soviet attack. I wanted to know what the Communists had against me personally, and the childhood question turned into a lifelong quest. I have lived in post-communist countries, consulted the Party files in the Comintern Archives in Moscow, interviewed dozens of former and current members of the Communist Party, and earned a PhD in the history of Communism from Georgetown University. On the way, I met memorable people, uncovered secrets, and experienced an amazing journey. I invite you to join me.
Extensively researched in both Chicago and Moscow, Storch’s book tells the story of the ordinary people who joined the Communist Party.
I like this book because it firmly refutes the myth that American Communists were a semi-criminal conspiracy of disturbed individuals. As Storch demonstrates, they were just ordinary people looking for answers to the Great Depression crisis. Attracted by specific Party campaigns, such as racial equality or workers’ rights, they rarely stayed more than a few years before finding Party life too demanding.
Focusing only on the Party’s leadership leaves most people out of history. I like this book because it puts the rank and file at the heart of the story.
Red Chicago is a social history of American Communism set within the context of Chicago's neighborhoods, industries, and radical traditions. Using local party records, oral histories, union records, party newspapers, and government documents, Randi Storch fills the gap between Leninist principles and the day-to-day activities of Chicago's rank-and-file Communists.
Uncovering rich new evidence from Moscow's former party archive, Storch argues that although the American Communist Party was an international organization strongly influenced by the Soviet Union, at the city level it was a more vibrant and flexible organization responsible to local needs and concerns. Thus, while working for a better…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
When I was nine, I watched the Air Force dig a giant hole outside of my hometown to install a Minuteman Two nuclear missile to protect us from Soviet attack. I wanted to know what the Communists had against me personally, and the childhood question turned into a lifelong quest. I have lived in post-communist countries, consulted the Party files in the Comintern Archives in Moscow, interviewed dozens of former and current members of the Communist Party, and earned a PhD in the history of Communism from Georgetown University. On the way, I met memorable people, uncovered secrets, and experienced an amazing journey. I invite you to join me.
Published in 1973, this was one of the first books I read when I began my lifelong research into the history of American Communism. It was one of the very first to be written by a former member of the Party and in my opinion remains one of the best in a now large number of communist autobiographies.
I like the book because of the intimate glimpses that Richmond gives his readers into the lives of the Party members he met over the course of his career and the outrageous tale of his own life. Richmond’s mother was a communist and an eyewitness to the Russian Revolution, making it almost inevitable that he would follow in the family business.
This remarkable book is a unique combination of personal narrative and political commentary, for it alternates autobiographical sketches and essays on the central issues of American radicalism.
I’ve been fascinated by how ordinary people can change the course of their own lives since I was a child. However, I had no idea until later in life that there were entire fields of study devoted to understanding how this process works historically. When I discovered “new labor history” many years ago, I knew I wanted to be part of it. It was the privilege of a lifetime to study under some of the best labor historians in the world at the University of Chicago. And I can’t describe how I felt when my dissertation won the Herbert Gutman Prize in Labor History. I hope these books spark your interest!
New Orleans has always been one of my favorite cities to visit.
Beyond the beignets and parades, did you know this gorgeous city also has a colorful and vibrant labor history that united Black and white waterfront workers in solidarity against wealthy capitalists? I didn’t know until I read Arnesen’s masterful book.
I remember staying up all night to finish it in grad school and being forever shaped by the dynamic stories of immigrants, Black migrants, and their children performing the waterfront labor that kept the cotton, sugar, and other goods flowing at the New Orleans port. I keep this biracial, waterfront labor movement in my heart right alongside the beignets and jazz.
This is an account of the New Orleans dockworkers and their formation of an inter-racial labour movement from 1880 to 1894, and again from 1901 to 1923. After the Civil War, Louisiana had no social group that exercised a clear and sustained cultural and political hegemony over the others, and sharp conflicts over racial and class issues marked the struggle for political control. This was particularly acute in New Orleans, which had what was in effect a long-standing black middle class. These free people of colour, along with ex-slaves under their guidance, fostered legislation that dismantled the segregated streetcar system…
I’m passionate about Sales with Soul because being sold to is awful. I’m passionate about leaders, by title, actually leading and it bugs me when the balance between getting work done and caring for the human is out of balance. There’s an elegant way to do both, and as someone who struggles with that concept, I have embraced my struggle and put frameworks and systems around the concept and teach it. We host clients, colleagues, and peers on our Rev Shots show to bring our content and discussions to life and share with our audience. I hope you enjoy the books and content as much as I have!
I love this book because it really speaks to the new world order of working.
It helped me rationalize my need to keep going to be at peace with the fact that I’m a builder/operator and not a maintainer. It helped me feel “normal” in my quest to be an entrepreneur and business owner instead of the “lifer” at a company. (Disclosure: Being a “lifer” isn’t a bad thing; it’s just not for me.)
From lawyer/chefs to surgeon/playwrights and mom/CEOs, today’s most fulfilling lives are the ones filled with slashes. One Person/Multiple Careers is essential reading for anyone who is loathe to answer “What do you do?” with a singular definition. Marci interviewed hundreds of people pursuing multiple careers simultaneously — from a longshoreman/documentary filmmaker to a management consultant/cartoonist — and discovered how slash careers integrate and fully express the multiple passions, talents, and interests that a single career often cannot accommodate. The book is a blueprint for building a life filled with slashes and custom-blending a career.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I have always been fascinated with ideas and ideologies and how people can interpret the world differently. As a teenager I wanted to become an ethnographer, to travel the world and discover other cultures. Now I focus mostly on Europe and the US, but I always look to challenge myself by talking with people who hold opposing views. I am impressed by the revival of religious, nationalist, and conservative ideas in our current world and how they offer their own philosophy of the social order. That’s why I selected books that can help me see the world through the eyes of others.
I enjoyed this book because it goes right to what is a core issue of our contemporary political landscape: how formerly Democratic blue-collar communities have been shifting their political orientation toward the Republicans.
I also loved the combination of ethnographic analysis and historical perspective the two authors display to look at the transformation of our trade union culture (in their case, in Pennsylvania). It tells us how much everyday sociability—how we spend our leisure time, which social groups we belong to, etc.—has reshaped our political worldview.
In the heyday of American labor, the influence of local unions extended far beyond the workplace. Unions were embedded in tight-knit communities, touching nearly every aspect of the lives of members-mostly men-and their families and neighbors. They conveyed fundamental worldviews, making blue-collar unionists into loyal Democrats who saw the party as on the side of the working man. Today, unions play a much less significant role in American life. In industrial and formerly industrial Rust Belt towns, Republican-leaning groups and outlooks have burgeoned among the kinds of voters who once would have been part of union communities.
I'm a labor journalist. I've spent the past 20 years writing widely about inequality, class war, unions, and the way that power works in America. My parents were civil rights and antiwar activists in the 1960s and 70s, and they instilled in me an appreciation for the fact that social movements are often the only thing standing between regular people and exploitation. My curiosity about power imbalances in America drew me inexorably towards the absence of worker power and led me to the conclusion that the labor movement is the tool that can solve America's most profound problems. I grew up in Florida, live in Brooklyn, and report all over.
Steven Greenhouse, who spent decades as The New York Times' labor reporter, writes as gooda survey of the state of the present-day labor movement as you can find anywhere.
Uberdrivers, health care workers, auto workers, and more, this is a book for anyone who wonderswhere union power stands, how it’s gotten here, and who the players are who are trying torevive unions for a new century.
“A page-turning book that spans a century of worker strikes.... Engrossing, character-driven, panoramic.” —The New York Times Book Review
We live in an era of soaring corporate profits and anemic wage gains, one in which low-paid jobs and blighted blue-collar communities have become a common feature of our nation’s landscape. Behind these trends lies a little-discussed problem: the decades-long decline in worker power.
Award-winning journalist and author Steven Greenhouse guides us through the key episodes and trends in history that are essential to understanding some of our nation’s most pressing problems, including increased income inequality, declining social mobility, and the…
Growing up in a blue-collar union family in the 1950s South I learned about the depth of racial and class injustice and the power of collective organizing. The many jobs I held in my twenties before fleeing to graduate school at Stanford University left me acutely aware of workplace sexism and disrespect. I became fascinated by how work shapes our sense of self and especially curious about the distinctive feminisms, labor movements, and politics of working-class women. These questions animate all my writing and teaching. Thirty years and seven books later, I believe reimagining work and labor movements is more necessary – and possible – than ever before.
Domestic workers, among the most exploited of the world’s working classes, knew they deserved more and believed the work they did – caring for the children, the disabled, the elderly – should be honored.
They organized first in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Soon the movement spread across the world. Jennifer Fish travels with the movement, from Cape Town to Geneva, Montevideo, and beyond. Like the women she befriends, Fish believes in the power of community and of what can be achieved when workers imagine the world they want and start moving together toward it.
There’s no better book about international worker solidarity and the power of thinking and acting both local and global.
From grassroots to global activism, the untold story of the world's first domestic workers' movement.
Domestic workers exist on the margins of the world labor market. Maids, nannies, housekeepers, au pairs, and other care workers are most often 'off the books,' working for long hours and low pay. They are not afforded legal protections or benefits such as union membership, health care, vacation days, and retirement plans. Many women who perform these jobs are migrants, and are oftentimes dependent upon their employers for room and board as well as their immigration status, creating an extremely vulnerable category of workers in…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am a novelist with my debut, The One, out in April 2023. I’m interested in stories about the role of gender, technology, and privacy in our contemporary culture.We spend so many hours at work, yet often the literature we read spends so little time discussing what that experience is actually like. As I wrote my own novel with a narrator flailing so aimlessly through her early post-grad years that she ends up on a reality dating show, I craved other books that tackled what it was like to have to earn a living at the forefront of the text, rather than a nebulous character detail in the background.
To close off the list, I picked a novel where the main character ends up becoming energized by her work.
At an otherwise soul-sucking job at a PR firm, Ellinor becomes involved with, and motivated by, a political movement about supporting postal workers in Norway.
For a novel that could have been bogged down by the inner workings of the EU and the Norwegian Postal Service, Hjorth’s writing style is crisp and perfect. She could choose any subject matter and it would be interesting.
Ellinor, a 35-year-old media consultant, has not been feeling herself; she's not been feeling much at all lately. Far beyond jaded, she picks through an old diary and fails to recognise the woman in its pages, seemingly as far away from the world around her as she's ever been. But when her coworker vanishes overnight, an unusual new task is dropped on her desk. Off she goes to meet the Norwegian Postal Workers Union, setting the ball rolling on a strange and transformative six months.
This is an existential scream of a novel about loneliness (and the postal service!), written…
