Best book on radical history
- Thread starter 8115
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Gramsci
Well-Known Member
SpineyNorman
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If you take into account who wrote it and the biases that go with it (SWP) Chris Harman's a people's history of the world isn't a bad read and easily digestable.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Kate Sharpley
Well-Known Member
Could you say a bit more: 'must have pirates'? 'must have luddites'? World or Britain?
sunnysidedown
caput mortuum
I recently read Norman Cohns’ The Pursuit of the Millennium - Revolutionary Millenarians & Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages.
Well worth reading, it was a real eye opener for me.
Well worth reading, it was a real eye opener for me.
SpineyNorman
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The making of the English working class by EP Thompson is about the best piece of radical history I've ever read. If your interest is english/British history it could be a good place to start.
eoin_k
Lawyer's fees, beetroot and music
Not sure about best, but these could all provide a way in:
P Linebaugh and M Ridecker, The Many Headed Hydra - revolutionary struggles against the Atlantic trade
CLR James, The Black Jacobins - Revolution in Haiti
EP Thompson, The Povery of Theory - Less a history book, but a good one by an historian
WJ Fishman, Eastend Jewish Radicals
P Linebaugh and M Ridecker, The Many Headed Hydra - revolutionary struggles against the Atlantic trade
CLR James, The Black Jacobins - Revolution in Haiti
EP Thompson, The Povery of Theory - Less a history book, but a good one by an historian
WJ Fishman, Eastend Jewish Radicals
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
Agreed, Fishman's book is very good. A later era covering anti fascism in the same locality is Joe Jacob's excellent "Out of the Ghetto ".
Um, something of a niche interest...but might appeal to you, 8115, is 'With One hand Tied behind Us' bu Jill Lidlington and Jill Norris. Ostensibly, a history of women's suffrage but with far less concentration on the Pankhursts et al and rather more on women's textile workers (cotton, lace, wool) in Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire including the struggle to organise and the often slightly uneasy relationships with the nascent Labour Party. Being old enough to have done a turn in a Lancashire cotton mill, I found this social history (herstory) from below rather refreshing.
eoin_k
Lawyer's fees, beetroot and music
I was thinking of that one too, but it turned into another whole list of memoirs by historical actors and other old books that weren't necessarily works of history when they were written.
eoin_k
Lawyer's fees, beetroot and music
Louise Raw's Striking a Light, about the Bryant and May matchwomen's strike, is also a good one on the lives of working women around the same period. Does a good job of challenging some lazy assumptions about women's place in labour history, while displacing the middle-class figure of Annie Besant from a leadership position too.
eoin_k
Lawyer's fees, beetroot and music
The way she uncovered their style and charivari, along with the suggestion that it possibly riffed off American abolitionism, caught my imagination more than the occupational health hazards. That and the statue in Bow of Gladstone with his hands still bloodstained today, historic memory in action.
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Kate Sharpley
Well-Known Member
"'Christ's poor' were not always pretty" (page 63 of the 1968 Pelican reprint).
Glad I didn't imagine that since it always comes to mind when sombody says "There's your precious bloody proletariat, how many of them are nice?"
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
I agree. This is the go to book for an explanation of English (not British for reasons he goes into) working class history and a rigorous examination of the foundational texts and issues that led to a proto working class becoming a working class in itself.
I’d also recommend the Hobsbawm trilogy for the same reasons.
SpineyNorman
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Bandits by Hobsbawm is great too if you want something a bit different. Robin Hood and social banditry
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
The poverty of theory - which i’ve just finished - is a brilliant read both in terms of characterising the endless psychodrama’s of the left and also a defence of Marxism, objectivity and history from below and against the post-modernists
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
“The Anarchists of Casals Viejas” by Jerome Mintz is a great piece of history, of historical detective work, of anthropology. It also gives a genuine voice to Spanish anarchist working people, refuting many myths and lies along the way. A great stocking filler at this festive time of year etc
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Funnily enough I was reading that the other day to provide a critique to my own tendencies towards relativism, postmodernism and other "continental" traits that I've picked up in academia. Didn't convince me, but was a good, quotable, read!
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
Publishing crowdfunder for new book, The Idea, by an urban regular: Just Books Publishing - 'The Idea' | StartSomeGood
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Pity not called "what we do in the shadows"
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Donated
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
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Hunt for the wilderpeople was betterPity not called "what we do in the shadows"
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Just re read this and it's outstanding
RedRedRose
Well-Known Member
AL Morton 'A People's History of England' isn't bad. I also second Hobsbawm.
petee
no gods, no malarkey
handy iforgraphic to go with it
