Steve Watson

A Decent Left Book Club

At Harry’s Place Gene is seeking suggestions for a list of books that are appropriate for the ‘Decent Left’. His readers are an erudite bunch and have come up with a vast number of suggestions. I’ve collected the good suggestions from that post and its comments here.

Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956 (Bob-B)
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Stepkoe)
        The Human Condition (Stepkoe)
Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals (Sarka)
Paul Berman , Terror and Liberalism (Gene)
        The Flight of the Intellectuals (Bob-B)
Michael Berube, The Left at War (Aloevera)
Ber Borochov, The National Question and Class Struggle (Abu Faris)
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (Scopedog)
Pascal Bruckner, The Tyranny of Guilt (Amie)
Michail Bulgakow, The Master and Margarita (Jurek Molnar)
Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: A Short History of Anti-Westernism (Suada)
Nick Cohen, What’s Left? (Gene)
Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millenium (Bob-B)
Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (Me)
Richard Crossman (ed.) The God That Failed (Gene)
Norman Davies, Rising ’44 (S&A)
Isaac Deutscher, The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays (KBPlayer)
Milovan Djilas, The New Class (Mesquito)
Joseph Dorman, Arguing the World: The New York Intellectuals in Their Own Words (Aloevera)
Tibor Fischer, Under the Frog (S&A)
Francois Furet, The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century (Aloevera)
Ortega Y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (Sarka)
Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe (Bob-B)
Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless (Kolya)
Jacob Heilbrunn, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons (Aloevera)
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Aloevera)
Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, The American Communist Party: A Critical History (Gene)
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (Scopedog)
Clive James, Cultural Amnesia (Sabadennis)
Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power (gur nischt)
Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon (Gene)
        Spanish Testament, (KBPlayer)
        Scum of the Earth, (KBPlayer)
        The Blue Arrow (KBPlayer)
Victor Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom (Gene)
        I Chose Justice (Gene)
Marc Lilla, The Reckless Mind (gur nischt)
Julius Martov, The State and the Socialist Revolution (Abu Faris)
Arno J Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (Aloevera)
Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind (S&A)
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
        Animal Farm
        1984
Patrik Ourednik, Europeana: A Brief History of the 20th Century (Sarka)
Anton Pannekoek, Lenin as Philosopher (Abu Faris)
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Aloevera)
Victor Serge, From Lenin to Stalin (Abu Faris)
Aran Shetterly, The Americano (Gene)
Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine (Gene)
        Emergency Exit (Gene)
Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park (S&A)
Tom Robb Smith, Child 44 (S&A)
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands (S&A)
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (KBPlayer)
        Writing by Candlelight (KBPlayer)
        The Heavy Dancers. (KBPlayer)
Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (KBPlayer)
Richard Wolin The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s (Bob-B)
Yvgeny Zamyatin, We(Shatterface)