99 Books For The 99%: Books for Social, Environmental, & Political Activism

1. Understanding Power By Noam Chomsky | Under $1.00 A major new collection from "arguably the most important intellectual alive" (The New York Times). Noam Chomsky is universally accepted as one of the preeminent public intellectuals of the modern era. Over the past thirty years, broadly diverse audiences have gathered to attend his sold-out lectures. Now, in ... More »

2. Race Matters By Cornel West | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 With a new introduction, the groundbreaking classic Race Matters affirms its position as the bestselling, most influential, and most original articulation of the urgent issues in America?s ongoing racial debate.Cornel West is at the forefront of thinking about race. In Race Matters he addresses a range of issues, ... More »

3. Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield By Jeremy Scahill | Used Price: 50% Off A New York Times bestsellerA Washington Post bestsellerNamed the top investigative journalism book of 2013 by Nieman Reports Selected as one of Publishers Weeklyâ€™s Top 10 Books of 2013Â“[A] courageous and exhaustive examination of the way a number of clandestine campaignsÂ—full of crimes, cover-ups, and assassinationsÂ—became the United ... More »

4. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate By Naomi Klein | Used Price: 60% Off The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core â€œfree marketâ€Â ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems.In short, either we ... More »

5. The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner By Daniel Ellsberg | Used Price: 50% Off Shortlisted for the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionFinalist for The California Book Award in NonfictionThe San Francisco Chronicle’s Best of 2017 ListIn These Times “Best Books of 2017”Huffington Post’s Ten Excellent December Books List LitHub’s “Five Books Making News This Week”From the legendary whistle-blower who ... More »

6. Bullshit Jobs: A Theory By David Graeber From bestselling writer David Graeber, a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs, and their consequences.Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit ... More »

7. The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger By Richard G. Wilkinson; Kate Pickett | 60% Off It is a well-established fact that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. The Spirit Level, based on thirty years of research, takes this truth a step further. One common factor links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree ... More »

8. What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage By Norman G. Finkelstein The Occupy movement and the protests that inspired it have focused new attention on the work of Mahatma Gandhi, who set out principles of nonviolent resistance during the struggle for Indian Independence, principles that found their echo in Tahrir Square, Puerta del Sol and Zuccotti Park some half ... More »

9. What Then Must We Do? By Gar Alperovitz | Used Price: 50% Off Never before have so many Americans been more frustrated with our economic system, more fearful that it is failing, or more open to fresh ideas about a new one. The seeds of a new movement demanding change are forming. But just what is this thing called a new ... More »

10. No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women By Estelle Freedman | Used Price: 70% Off â€œOn the situations of women around the world today, this one book provides more illumination and insight than a dozen others combined. . . . Freedmanâ€™s survey is a triumph of global scope and informed precision.â€Ââ€“NANCY F. COTT Professor of History, Harvard UniversityRepeatedly declared dead by ... More »

11. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution By David Harvey Long before Occupy, cities were the subject of much utopian thinking. They are the centers of capital accumulation as well as of revolutionary politics, where deeper currents of social and political change rise to the surface. Do the financiers and developers control access to urban resources or do ... More »

12. From Dictatorship to Democracy By Gene Sharp Twenty-one years ago, at a friendâ€™s request, a Massachusetts professor sketched out a blueprint for nonviolent resistance to repressive regimes. It would go on to be translated, photocopied, and handed from one activist to another, traveling from country to country across the globe: from Iran to Venezuela—where both ... More »

13. Silent Spring By Rachel Carson | Used Price: 80% Off Rachel Carsonâ€™s Silent Spring was first published in three serialized excerpts in the New Yorker in June of 1962. The book appeared in September of that year and the outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our ... More »

14. Hiroshima By John Hersey | Used Price: 80% Off "At, exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in ... More »

15. Mountains Beyond Mountains: One doctor's quest to heal the world By Tracy Kidder; Paul Farmer | 80% Off This compelling and inspiring book, now in a deluxe paperback edition, shows how one person can work wonders. In Mountains Beyond Mountains, Pulitzer Prizeâ€”winning author Tracy Kidder tells the true story of a gifted man who loves the world and has set out to do all he can ... More »

16. Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities By Rebecca Solnit | Used Price: 50% Off "No writer has better understood the mix of fear and possibility, peril and exuberance that's marked this new millennium."—Bill McKibben "An elegant reminder that activist victories are easily forgotten, and that they often come in extremely unexpected, roundabout ways."—The New YorkerA book as powerful and influential as Rebecca ... More »

17. Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis By George Monbiot | Used Price: 50% Off A thrilling new route to a better societyA toxic ideology of extreme competition and individualism has come to dominate our world. It misrepresents human nature, destroying hope and common purpose. Only a positive vision can replace it, a new story that re-engages people in politics and lights a ... More »

19. America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism By Anatol Lieven | Used Price: 80% Off Originally published over half a decade ago, Anatol Lieven's America Right or Wrong has become a classic analysis of the special character of American nationalism. As he demonstrated, America's foreign policy response to the 9/11 attacks flowed directly from a nationalistic tradition that was two centuries in the ... More »

20. Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State By Ralph Nader | Used Price: 60% Off Ralph Nader has fought for over fifty years on behalf of American citizens against the reckless influence of corporations and their government patrons on our society. Now he ramps up the fight and makes a persuasive case that Americans are not powerless. In Unstoppable, he explores the emerging ... More »

21. The Boy Who Could Change the World By Aaron Swartz; Lawrence Lessig In his too-short life, Aaron Swartz reshaped the Internet, questioned our assumptions about intellectual property, and touched all of us in ways that we may not even realize. His tragic suicide in 2013 at the age of twenty-six after being aggressively prosecuted for copyright infringement shocked the nation ... More »

22. To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism By Evgeny Morozov | Used Price: 50% Off In the very near future, Â“smartâ€Â technologies and Â“big dataâ€Â will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life. Technology will allow us to solve problems in highly original ways and create new incentives to get more people to do the right ... More »

23. Beyond the Green Zone By Dahr Jamail | Used Price: 80% Off â€œInternational journalism at its best.â€Ââ€”Stephen Kinzerâ€œEvery conflict spawns a handful of journalists who are willing to not only brave the war zone but to seek out the stories ignored by the press pack. The Iraq War has brought us Dahr Jamail. . . . I suspect Jamailâ€™s account ... More »

24. What's Wrong With a Free Lunch? By Philippe van Parijs | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Our politicians insist that we live in a time of unprecedented prosperity, yet more and more Americans are pointing out that the richest 1% of our society holds more wealth than the bottom 90% put together. In this timely book, economist Philippe Van Parijs has a simple plan ... More »

25. Masscult and Midcult: Essays Against the American Grain By Dwight Macdonald | Used Price: 50% Off A New York Review Books OriginalAn uncompromising contrarian, a passionate polemicist, a man of quick wit and wide learning, an anarchist, a pacifist, and a virtuoso of the slashing phrase, Dwight Macdonald was an indefatigable and indomitable critic of Americaâ€™s susceptibility to well-meaning cultural fakery: all those estimable, ... More »

26. Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters By Hans Blix | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 In 2002 Dr. Hans Blix, then chief United Nations weapons inspector, led his team on a search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Before the United ... More »

27. Physical Resistance: A Hundred Years of Anti-Fascism By Dave Hann | Used Price: 50% Off Large-scale confrontations, disruption of meetings, sabotage and street fighting have been part of the practice of anti-fascism from the early twentieth century until the twenty-first. Rarely endorsed by any political party, the use of collective ... More »

28. Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War By Robin Yassin-Kassab; Leila Al-Shami In 2011, many Syrians took to the streets of Damascus to demand the overthrow of the government of Bashar al-Assad. Today, much of Syria has become a warzone and many worry that the country is on the brink of collapse. Burning Country explores the complicated reality of ... More »

29. Economics: The User's Guide By Ha-Joon Chang In his bestselling 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang brilliantly debunked many of the predominant myths of neoclassical economics. Now, in an entertaining and accessible primer, he explains how the global economy actually worksâ€”in real-world terms. Writing with irreverent wit, a deep ... More »

30. The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991 By Eric Hobsbawm | Used Price: 80% Off Dividing the century into the Age of Catastrophe, 1914-1950, the Golden Age, 1950-1973, and the Landslide, 1973-1991, Hobsbawm marshals a vast array of data into a volume of unparalleled inclusiveness, vibrancy, and insight, a work that ranks with his classics The Age of Empire and The Age of ... More »

31. Culture and Imperialism By Edward W. Said | Used Price: 60% Off A landmark work from the intellectually auspicious author of Orientalism that explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. "Said is a brilliant . . . scholar, aesthete and political activist."--Washington Post Book World. More »

32. The End of Nature By Bill McKibben | Used Price: 80% Off Reissued on the tenth anniversary of its publication, this classic work on our environmental crisis features a new introduction by the author, reviewing both the progress and ground lost in the fight to save the earth.This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a ... More »

33. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class By Guy Standing | Used Price: 50% Off Neo-liberal policies and institutional changes have produced a huge and growing number of people with sufficiently common experiences to be called an emerging class. In this book Guy Standing introduces what he calls the Precariat - a growing number of people across the world living and working precariously, ... More »

34. Lawless World By Philippe Sands Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules is a book by the British attorney and author, Philippe Sands. It was published by Viking Adult in October 2005. Sands is a professor of international law at University College London. Among other issues, the book discusses the ... More »

35. How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life By Robert Skidelsky; Edward Skidelsky | 80% Off A provocative and timely call for a moral approach to economics, drawing on philosophers, political theorists, writers, and economists from Aristotle to Marx to Keynes What constitutes the good life? What is the true value of money? Whydo we work such long hours merely to acquire greater wealth? Theseare ... More »

36. Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest By Zeynep Tufekci A firsthand account and incisive analysis of modern protest, revealing internet-fueled social movements’ greatest strengths and frequent challenges To understand a thwarted Turkish coup, an anti–Wall Street encampment, and a packed Tahrir Square, we must first comprehend the power and the weaknesses of using new technologies ... More »

37. What Is Populism? By Jan-Werner Muller 'This lucid guide is essential reading' GuardianFrom Donald Trump to Recep Erdogan, populists are on the rise across the globe. But what exactly is populism? Should everyone who criticizes Wall Street or Washington be called a populist? What precisely is the difference between right-wing and left-wing populism? Does ... More »

38. The ABCs of Political Economy: A Modern Approach By Robin Hahnel | Used Price: 80% Off The ABCs of Political Economy is an accessible introduction to modern political economy. While informed by the work of Marx, Keynes, Veblen, Kalecki and other great political economists, Robin Hahnel teaches the reader the essential tools necessary to understand economic issues today from a modern perspective, searching ... More »

40. Black Feminist Thought By Patricia Hill Collins | 70% Off In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, originally published in 1990, Patricia Hill Collins set out to explore the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals and ... More »

41. A People's History of the United States By Howard Zinn | Used Price: 70% Off A People's History of the United States is an attempt by Howard Zinn to present an alternative history of America from below. It's a view of US history from the perspective of ordinary and oppressed people. It's extremely popular and - in addition to being on many high ... More »

42. In Praise of Idleness By Bertrand Russell | Used Price: 60% Off Intolerance and bigotry lie at the heart of all human suffering. So claims Bertrand Russell at the outset of In Praise of Idleness, a collection of essays in which he espouses the virtues of cool reflection and free enquiry; a voice of calm in a world of maddening ... More »

43. Women's Movements in the Global Era By Amrita Basu | Used Price: 50% Off This book provides a path-breaking study of the genesis, growth, gains, and dilemmas of women's movements in countries throughout the world. Its focus is on the global South, where women's movements have engaged in complex negotiations with national and international forces. It challenges widely held assumptions about the ... More »

44. PR! - A Social History of Spin By Stuart Ewen | Used Price: 80% Off The early years of the twentieth century were a difficult period for Big Business. Corporate monopolies, the brutal exploitation of labor, and unscrupulous business practices were the target of blistering attacks from a muckraking press and an increasingly resentful public. Corporate giants were no longer able to operate ... More »

45. Stonewall By Martin Duberman | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 "As scholars we should read Stonewall, and as teachers we should assign it. All of us will be challenged to build on it."â€”Michael Sherry, Northwestern Univ. "Both a fascinating account of the birth of gay liberation and a replay of the turbulent, society-changing 60s."â€”San Francisco Chronicle. More »

46. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace By Gore Vidal | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual peace." The Federation of American Scientists has cataloged nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and ... More »

47. Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism By L.A. Kauffman | Used Price: 60% Off A longtime movement insider's powerful account of the origins of today's protest movements and what they can achieve now As Americans take to the streets in record numbers to resist the presidency of Donald Trump, L.A. Kauffman’s timely, trenchant history of protest offers unique insights into how ... More »

48. Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition By Alastair McIntosh | Used Price: 80% Off Climate change is the greatest challenge that the world has ever faced. In this groundbreaking new book, Alastair McIntosh summarises the science of what is happening to the planet - both globally and using Scotland as a local case study. He moves on, controversially, to suggest that politics ... More »

49. Globalisation Development and Social Justice By Ann El Khoury Are there existing alternatives to corporate globalisation? What are the prospects for and commonalities between communities and movements such as Occupy, the World Social Forum and alternative economies? This book advances the proposition that another globalisation is not only possible, but already exists. It demonstrates that there are ... More »

50. Making Peace with the Earth By Vandana Shiva Shows how millions in the West are running up huge ecological debts to the third world through over-consumption. More »

51. Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Influenza, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science By Rob Wallace Thanks to breakthroughs in production and food science, agribusiness has been able to devise new ways to grow more food and get it more places more quickly. There is no shortage of news items on hundreds of thousands of hybrid poultry – each animal genetically identical to the ... More »

52. How America Gets Away with Murder By Michael Mandel | Used Price: 80% Off "Exciting, original, and completely convincing ...This book is essential reading for anybody who wants to understand how the law really works in international affairs, and it throws a great deal of light on those international affairs themselves." Edward S. Herman "This closely reasoned and carefully documented study is ... More »

53. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City By Matthew Desmond | Used Price: 60% Off WINNER OF THE 2017 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NONFICTION In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted ... More »

54. The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All By Martin Sandbu A radical new approach to economic policy that addresses the symptoms and causes of inequality in Western society today Fueled by populism and the frustrations of the disenfranchised, the past few years have witnessed the widespread rejection of the economic and political order that Western countries built up ... More »

55. The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters By Frances Stonor Saunders | 70% Off In addition to being short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award upon publication in 2000, Frances Stonor Saunders's The Cultural Cold War was met with the kind of attention reserved for books that directly hit a cultural nerve. Impassioned reviews and features in major publications such as the ... More »

56. Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 By Tanya Reinhart | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 In Israel/Palestine, Reinhart traces the development of the Security Barrier and Israelâ€™s new doctrine of "disengagement," launched in response to a looming Palestinian-majority population. Examining the official record of recent diplomacy, including United Statesâ€“brokered accords and talks at Camp David, Oslo, and Taba, Reinhart explores the fundamental power ... More »

57. Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism By Stephanie L. Mudge Left-leaning political parties play an important role as representatives of the poor and disempowered. They once did so by promising protections from the forces of capital and the market’s tendencies to produce inequality. But in the 1990s they gave up on protection, asking voters to adapt to a ... More »

58. Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia By Peter Pomerantsev | Used Price: 60% Off A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia, where even dictatorship is a reality showProfessional killers with the souls of artists, would-be theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, suicidal supermodels, Hell's Angels who hallucinate themselves as holy warriors, and oligarch revolutionaries: welcome to the wild and ... More »

59. The Autobiography of Malcolm X By Malcolm X; Alex Haley | 70% Off From hustling, drug addiction and armed violence in America's black ghettos Malcolm X turned, in a dramatic prison conversion, to the puritanical fervour of the Black Muslims. As their spokesman he became identified in the white press as a terrifying teacher of race hatred; but to his direct ... More »

60. The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic By Chalmers Johnson | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 "Impressive . . . a powerful indictment of U.S. military and foreign policy." -Los Angeles Times Book Review, front page In the years after the Soviet Union imploded, the United States was described first as the globe's "lone superpower," then as a "reluctant sheriff," next as the "indispensable ... More »

61. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism By Sheldon S. Wolin Democracy is struggling in America--by now this statement is almost clichÃ©. But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, ... More »

62. Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times By Robert W. McChesney First published to great acclaim in 2000, Rich Media, Poor Democracy is Robert W. McChesneyâ€™s magnum opus. Called a Â“rich, penetrating studyâ€Â by Noam Chomsky, the book is a meticulously researched exposition of how U.S. media and communication empires are threatening effective democratic governance. What happens when a ... More »

63. No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes By Anand Gopal | Used Price: 50% Off Told through the lives ofÂ three Afghans, the stunningÂ tale of how theÂ United StatesÂ had triumph in sight in Afghanistanâ€”and then brought the Taliban back from the deadIn a breathtaking chronicle, acclaimed journalist Anand Gopal traces in vivid detail the lives of three Afghans caught in Americaâ€™s war on terror. He ... More »

64. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance By James Scott | Used Price: 60% Off This sensitive picture of the constant and circumspect struggle waged by peasants materially and ideologically against their oppressors shows that techniques of evasion and resistance may represent the most significant and effective means of class struggle in the long run. More »

65. Angrynomics By Mark Blyth; Eric Lonergan Why are measures of stress and anxiety on the rise when economists and politicians tell us we have never had it so good? While statistics tell us that the vast majority of people are getting steadily richer, the world most of us experience day in and day out ... More »

66. Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal By Tristram Stuart | Under $1.00 The true cost of what the global food industry throws away. With shortages, volatile prices and nearly one billion people hungry, the world has a food problemâ€”or thinks it does. Farmers, manufacturers, supermarkets and consumers in North America and Europe discard up to half of their foodâ€”enough to ... More »

67. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power By Joel Bakan | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Over the last 150 years the corporation has risen from relative obscurity to become the world's dominant economic institution. Eminent Canadian law professor and legal theorist Joel Bakan contends that today's corporation is a pathological institution, a dangerous possessor of the great power it wields over people and ... More »

68. American Gandhi: A. J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century By Leilah Danielson | Used Price: 50% Off When Abraham Johannes Muste died in 1967, newspapers throughout the world referred to him as the "American Gandhi." Best known for his role in the labor movement of the 1930s and his leadership of the peace movement in the postwar era, Muste was one of the most charismatic ... More »

69. Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement By Lawrence Wittner | Used Price: 80% Off Confronting the Bomb tells the dramatic, inspiring story of how citizen activism helped curb the nuclear arms race and prevent nuclear war. This abbreviated version of Lawrence Wittner's award-winning trilogy, The Struggle Against the Bomb, shows how a worldwide, grassroots campaignâ€”the largest social movement of modern timesâ€”challenged the ... More »

70. Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade By John Tirman In this fascinating investigation of modern warfare, John Tirman asks why the United States currently exports more weapons than all other countries combined and questions the justification for this morally questionable exercise. Tracking the development of the Sikorsky assault helicopter and its use in connection with certain human ... More »

71. Famine Crimes: Politics & the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa By Alex de Waal | Used Price: 60% Off "A powerful critique of the international humanitarian agencies dominating famine relief in Africa." â€”Foreign Affairs"This is unquestionably an important book by a writer whose accomplishments as a researcher, critic and activist on famine and on human rights in Africa are widely respect." â€”International Affairs"... de Waal pleads for ... More »

72. Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America By Walter LaFeber | Under $1.00 Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica are five small countries, and yet no other part of the world is more important to the US. This book explains the history of US/Central American relations, explaining why these countries have remained so overpopulated, illiterate and violent; and why ... More »

73. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander | Used Price: 60% Off Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges ... More »

74. Africa Uprising: Popular Protest and Political Change By Adam Branch; Zachariah Mampilly For a long time now, Africa's political landscape has been wracked by violence. In recent years, however, a more positive force has risen in response to that violence: popular protest. Countries throughout the continent, from Tunisia and Egypt to Uganda and Senegal, have witnessed uprisings by a wide ... More »

75. Walking with the Comrades By Arundhati Roy | Used Price: 70% Off From the award-winning author of The God of Small Things comes a searing frontline exposÃ© of brutal repression in IndiaIn her latest book, internationally renowned author Arundhati Roy draws on her unprecedented access to a little-known rebel movement in India to pen a work full ... More »

76. Anders Breivik and the Rise of Islamophobia By Sindre Bangstad In late July 2011, Norway was struck by the worst terror attack in its history. I what can only be called a killing spree, Anders Behring Breivik murdered 77 people, bombing government building and an hour long shooting spree in a the island of UtÃ¸ya. His actions were ... More »

77. Why We Hate Politics By Colin Hay Politics was once a term with an array of broadly positive connotations, associated with public scrutiny, deliberation and accountability. Yet today it is an increasingly dirty word, typically synonymous with duplicity, corruption, inefficiency and undue interference in matters both public and private. How has this come to pass? ... More »

78. Eichmann in Jerusalem By Hannah Arendt | Used Price: 80% Off The controversial journalistic analysis of the mentality that fostered the HolocaustÂ Originally appearing as a series of articles inÂ The New Yorker, Hannah Arendtâ€™s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann sparked a flurry of debate upon its publication. This revised edition includes material that ... More »

80. Fear: The History of a Political Idea By Corey Robin | Used Price: 80% Off For many commentators, September 11 inaugurated a new era of fear. But as Corey Robin shows in his unsettling tour of the Western imagination--the first intellectual history of its kind--fear has shaped our politics and culture since time immemorial. From the Garden ... More »

82. Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail By Frances Fox Piven; Richard A. Cloward Have the poor fared best by participating in conventional electoral politics or by engaging in mass defiance and disruption? The authors of the classic Regulating The Poor assess the successes and failures of these two strategies as they examine, in this provocative study, four protest movements of lower-class ... More »

83. World Hunger: Twelve Myths By Frances Moore Lappe; Joseph Collins; Peter Rosset In this completely revised and updated edition of the most authoritative book on world hunger, three of our foremost experts on food and agriculture expose and explode the myths that prevent us from effectively addressing the problem. Drawing on and distilling the extensive research of the Institute for ... More »

84. Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life By Paul Goodman; Percival Goodman | 80% Off Communitas is also the title of a book published in 1947 by the 20th-century American thinker and writer Paul Goodman and his brother, Percival Goodman, who is less well-known, but a thinker in his own right. Their book examines three kinds of possible societies: a society centered on ... More »

85. Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens By Nicholas Shaxson | Used Price: 60% Off A thrilling ride inside the world of tax havens and corporate mastermindsWhile the United States experiences recession and economic stagnation and European countries face bankruptcy, experts struggle to make sense of the crisis. Nicholas Shaxson, a former correspondent for the Financial Times and The Economist, argues that tax ... More »

86. The Rule of Law By Tom Bingham | Used Price: 60% Off "The Rule of Law" is a phrase much used but little examined. The idea of the rule of law as the foundation of modern states and civilizations has recently become even more talismanic than that of democracy, but what does it actually consist of? In this brilliant short ... More »

87. Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems By Thomas Ferguson | Used Price: 50% Off "To discover who rules, follow the gold." This is the argument of Golden Rule, a provocative, pungent history of modern American politics. Although the role big money plays in defining political outcomes has long been obvious to ordinary Americans, most pundits and scholars have virtually dismissed this assumption. ... More »

88. Pandemics: A Very Short Introduction By Christian W. McMillen The 2014 Ebola epidemic demonstrated the power of pandemics and their ability not only to destroy lives locally but also to capture the imagination and terrify the world. Christian W. McMillen provides a concise yet comprehensive account of pandemics throughout human history, illustrating how pandemic disease has shaped ... More »

89. Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity By Julia Serano | Used Price: 60% Off In the updated second edition of Whipping Girl, Julia Serano, a transsexual woman whose supremely intelligent writing reflects her diverse background as a lesbian transgender activist and professional biologist, shares her powerful experiences and observations?both pre- and post-transition?to reveal the ways in which fear, suspicion, and dismissiveness toward ... More »

90. Amusing Ourselves to Death By Neil Postman | Used Price: 60% Off Originally published in 1985, Neil Postmanâ€™s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic mediaâ€”from the Internet to cell phones to DVDsâ€”it ... More »

91. Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege By Amira Hass | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 In 1993, Amira Hass, a young Israeli reporter, drove to Gaza to cover a story-and stayed, the first journalist to live in the grim Palestinian enclave so feared and despised by most Israelis that, in the local idiom, "Go to Gaza" is another way to say "Go to ... More »

92. In Praise of Barbarians: Essays against Empire By Mike Davis | Used Price: 70% Off The author of City of Quartz and Planet of Slums attacks the current fashion for empires and white menâ€™s burdens in this blistering collection of radical essays. He skewers contemporary idols such as Mel Gibson, Niall Ferguson, and Howard Dean; unlocks some secret doors in the Pentagon and ... More »

93. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed By Jared Diamond | Used Price: 80% Off In Jared Diamondâ€™s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilizationEnvironmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all ... More »

94. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America By Barbara Ehrenreich | Used Price: 80% Off Our sharpest and most original social critic goes "undercover" as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity.Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding ... More »

96. Activists in City Hall By Pierre Clavel | Under $1.00 In 1983, Boston and Chicago elected progressive mayors with deep roots among community activists. Taking office as the Reagan administration was withdrawing federal aid from local governments, Boston's Raymond Flynn and Chicago's Harold Washington implemented major policies that would outlast them. More than reforming governments, they changed the ... More »

97. Disciplined Minds By Jeff Schmidt "This book is stolen. Written in part on stolen time, that is. Because like millions of others who work for a living, I was giving most of my prime time to my employer..." So begins Jeff Schmidt in this riveting book about the world of professional work. ... More »

98. Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil By Nancy Scheper-Hughes | 80% Off When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil, this is an account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness and death that centres on the ... More »

99. Walden and Civil Disobedience By Henry David Thoreau | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 The two defining works of a transcendentalist masterDisdainful of Americaâ€™s booming commercialism and industrialism, Henry David Thoreau left Concord, Massachusetts, in 1845 to live in solitude in the woods near Walden Pond. Walden, the account of his stay, conveys at once a naturalistâ€™s wonder at the commonplace and ... More »

99 Books For The 99% is a list of the best books for social, environmental, & political activism. It contains works on the important issues for activists, works by leading activists, and works on activist tactics and successes. Its title is a homage to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, but the reading list is relevant to all political activists. For more on left-wing politics see our list The Best Anarchist, Communist, and Socialist Books of All Time . If there are any works missing from the list please let us know in the comments section below.