Anthropology (Documentaries)

  • Dead Birds
  • Nanook of the North (watch to critique)
  • Forest of Bliss
  • Leviathan
  • Sweetgrass
  • Ongka's Big Moka
  • Framing the Other
  • Secrets of the Tribe

Must-watch Documentaries. POLITICS AND HISTORY

  • “Why We Fight” (BBC, 2005)
  • “Fahrenheit 9/11” (Michael Moore, 2004)
  • “War on Democracy” (John Pilger, 2007)
  • “Hijacking Catastrophe” (Sut Jhally, 2004)
  • “Breaking the Silence” (John Pilger, 2003)
jan 1 2018 ∞
jan 1 2018 +

Violence:

  • Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice - Geoffrey Robertson
  • Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning - Timothy Synder
  • Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships - Alan Page Fiske

specifically about ones that pose more against "human rights" based interventionism.

Single Author/Topic Books

  • A Republic, Not An Empire - Patrick J. Buchanan. An overview of American foreign policy history from a Conservative non-interventionist perspective
  • The Illusion of Victory & The New Dealers’ War - Thomas Fleming. These two large histories of the 1st and 2nd world wars are a good primer for the average person,...
jan 1 2018 ∞
mar 7 2018 +
  • Mine Boy - Peter Abrahams
  • This Island Now - Peter Abrahams
  • GB84 - David Peace
  • No Mean City - Mcarthur & Long
  • The Aguero Sisters - Christina Garcia
  • Petals of Blood - Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
  • Weep not, child - Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
  • God's Bits of Wood - Sembene Osmane
  • Tar Baby - Toni Morrison
  • Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
  • Union Street - Pat Barker
  • Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy
  • Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell
  • Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
  • Germinal - Emile Zola
  • The Iron Heel - Jack London
  • Slow Birds - Ian Watson
  • Parable of the Sower - Octavia E. Butler
  • Parable of the Talents - Octavia E. Butler
  • The Inhabited Woman - Gioconda Belli
oct 14 2017 ∞
jan 1 2018 +
  • The Promise of Happiness - Sara Ahmed
  • Where We Stand: Class Matters - bell hooks
  • Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? - Michael J. Sandel
  • A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster - Rebecca Solnit
  • Oh, HuMANity! Race Relations In The Trump Era - Beverlyn L. Elliot
  • Through the Eyes of Rebel Women: The Young Lords, 1969-1976 - Iris Morales
  • Capitalism: A Ghost Story - Arundhati Roy

--- Violence, Human Rights, and Justice

  • Multicultural Odysseys : Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity - Will Kymlicka
  • The International Struggle for New Human Rights - Clifford Bob
oct 14 2017 ∞
dec 17 2017 +
  • Clarence Darrow: Attorney For The Damned - John A. Farrell
  • Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), Carol Tavris - not strictly about law, but fascinating discussion of cognitive dissonance & false evidence
  • 24 Hours With 24 Lawyers, Jasper Kim - includes insight into criminal law.
  • Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse, Steve Bogira - comprehensive, disturbing, riveting
  • The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, William J. Stuntz - the classic scholarly analysis of America’s incarceration problem. Gigantic but profound.
  • Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice, Paul Butler - damning perspective on the racial and class biases of the US criminal justice system.
  • Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing - Ted Conover...
mar 18 2018 ∞
mar 18 2018 +
  • Ward No. 6 - Anton Chekhov
  • In Exile - Anton Chekhov
  • White Nights - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • The Dream of a Ridiculous Man - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • The Queen of Spades - Alexander Pushkin
  • The Blizzard - Alexander Pushkin
  • Diary of a Madman - Nikolai Gogol
  • The Overcoat - Nikolai Gogol
  • Twenty-six men and a Girl - Maxim Gorky
  • The City - Leonid Andreyev
  • Stepping Stones - Leonid Andreyev
  • A Country Doctor - Franz Kafka
  • In the Penal Colony - Franz Kafka
  • The Black Spider - Jeremias Gotthelf
  • The Dead - James Joyce
  • Unexpected Reunion - Johann Peter Hebel
  • The Oval Portrait - Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Black Cat - Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Unknown Masterpiece - Honoré de Balzac
jan 1 2018 ∞
jan 1 2018 +
  • La Belle Sauvage - Phillip Pullman
  • Voyage in the Dark - Jean Rhys
  • The Palace of Dreams - Ismail Kadare
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
  • Deerskin - Robin McKinley
  • The Monkey Wrench Gang - Edward Abbey
  • Calling a Wolf a Wolf - Kaveh Akbar
  • The Hours - Michael Cunningham
  • Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy - Mark Doty
  • Written on the Body - Jeanette Winterson
  • Voyages and Discoveries: Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation - Richard Hakluyt
  • Angel Dust Apocalypse - Jeremy Robert Johnson
  • Magic America - C.E. Medford
  • Iris Murdoch - The Black Prince
  • Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett
  • The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky - Vaslav Nij...
oct 14 2017 ∞
dec 16 2017 +
  • Elizabeth of Toro: The Odyssey of an African Princess Paperback – Elizabeth Nyabongo
  • The Old Ways - Rob MacFarlane
  • A Defense of Ardor: Essays - by Adam Zagajewski
  • Voices from Chernobyl : The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
  • Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone - Eduardo Galeano
  • "Who, What Am I?": Tolstoy Struggles to Narrate the Self
  • Standard Operating Procedure - Philip Gorevich
  • Notes on Thought and Vision - H.D., Paul Bowles
  • Anais Nin's Lost World: Paris in Words and Pictures - Britt Arenander
  • Reclaiming Conversation - Sherry Turkle

On Writing and Fiction:

oct 14 2017 ∞
jan 4 2018 +
  • “The Fire Next Time” in Collected Essays by James Baldwin.
  • The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life, His Own by David Carr
  • The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist
  • Battle Cry of Freedom: The Era of the Civil War by James McPherson
  • Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 by Arnold R. Hirsch
  • Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America by Beryl Satter
  • Confederate States of America - Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union from Avalon Project, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale La...
mar 18 2018 ∞
mar 18 2018 +
  • The Social Sex: A History of Female Friendship - Marilyn Yalom

(Many of these texts are admittedly problematic, but it's important to know where we've come from in order to move forward.)

Introduction

  • Manifesta - Jennifer Baumgardner
  • Feminism is For Everybody: Passionate Politics - Bell Hooks
  • Full-Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti

More

  • The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir
  • Gender Trouble - Judith Butler
  • Backlash - Susan Faludi
  • No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women - Estelle B. Freedman
  • The Essential Feminist Reader edited - Es...
jan 1 2018 ∞
mar 8 2018 +

Pursuing a Literature Degree

  • Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction - Jonathan Culler

Winter

  • Winter - Ali Smith
  • Averno - Louis Gluck
  • The Bottom of the Jar - Abdellatif Laâbi, André Naffis-Sahely
  • Harmonium - Wallace Stevens
  • Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
  • Roland Barthes’ The Lover’s Discourse
  • Anna Akhmatova’s Selected Poems

18-20

  • History of the Conquest of Mexico - William H. Prescott
  • Tales of Good and Evil - Nikolai Gogol "Overcoat", "The Two Ivans", "Nevsky Prospect"
dec 7 2017 ∞
jan 1 2018 +
  • Sven Birkerts, Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age
  • Our Sea of Islands - Epeli Hau’ofa
  • Emergent Multiverse: Quantum Theory According to the Everett Interpretation - David Wallace
  • The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? - Paul Davies
  • The Feynman Lectures on Physics - Richard Feynman
  • The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos-  Brian Greene
  • Dying Words: Endangered Languages and What They Have to Tell Us - Nicholas Evans
  • Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind - George Lakoff
  • The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language - John H. McWhorter
oct 14 2017 ∞
mar 21 2018 +

History, Politics, Classics, Law

  • BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time
  • Backdoor Broadcasting
  • Oxford University Podcasts
  • Amicus (law & legal systems)

Science & Science Fictionish

  • The Message: meta podcast
  • NPR’s Invisibilia (human behavior, forces & ideas that shape it)
  • EOS 10
  • Star Talk
  • Imaginary Worlds

Crime

  • Criminal
  • Limetown
  • In the Dark
  • S-Town
  • Missing

Non-Fiction, Film, Television, Pop Cultur...

oct 14 2017 ∞
oct 14 2017 +