Not until I retired after 35+ years in my field did I realize what a. great boon it had been to be an academic who literally got paid to read books.
Now, as I think about what we are facing as a nation, I think about the books that I hope people might get the chance to read and ponder ... in a world that increasingly has no time for that kind of non-productive behavior.
Almost equally importantly, I think of books that you can either get for free, or for dirt cheap, without having to send money to Jeff Bezos and Amazon.
WHERE TO GET THESE BOOKS (with a couple minor exceptions)
Every one of these books (unless otherwise noted individually) is available both at Anna's Archive and Abe Books.
Anna's Archive is a free digital library that describes itself thus:
The largest truly open library in human history. ⭐️ We mirror Sci-Hub and LibGen. We scrape and open-source Z-Lib, DuXiu, and more. 📈 42,295,586 books, 13,266,182 papers — preserved forever. All our code and data are completely open source.
It's true -- this is the worthy successor to LibGen and far superior to the Internet Archive (though you can still find odd things there that you can find nowhere else). If you don't buy a membership you have to use the "slow downloads" sources, but honestly I download more books than you ever will (trust me) and I work around the slow downloads on background browsing.
Sometimes you will get a bad file -- shit happens. But mostly (especially in pdf and epub) you're golden.
There is of course the question of whether you had deep feelings of depriving authors of royalties by grabbing what are essentially bootleg copies of their work. As an author with fourteen books up on Anna's Archive, I personally am just happy that people continue to look for, download, and hopefully read my stuff. Trust me -- particularly in a hard copy, you're not depriving the author of much. But if that is an issue ...
... use Abe Books instead. A-B-E (advanced book exchange) is a marketplace for hundreds if not thousands of booksellers worldwide. You can find almost anything, and usually at a phenomenally good price (or at least a fair price). You are ordering through Abe Books to the individual bookseller, but the cool part is that if there is a problem, it's Abe Books that returns your money, and they go get satisfaction from the sellers. Since the sellers don't want that to happen, they are very accommodating.
I have probably ordered more than 200 books this way over the years, and had a significant problem with only one, which was ironed out in 48 hours to my complete satisfaction. If there is a refund to be made, you get it directly from Abe Books rather than having to wait on the individual seller.
THE BOOK CATEGORIES (for today):
I want to suggest books in three different categories today: (a) non-fiction regarding resistance to authoritarianism in America (to include considerations of violent resistance); (b) non-fiction regarding a variety of threats to American democracy in past days (that are not quite what you may think; and (c) relevant fiction about America and fascism
Resistance to fascism/authoritarianism
(This first recommendatin is the one exception that you would have to get through Amazon/Audible because it is only available in an audiobook as an Amazon Original. but I highly recommend it):
The Minuteman by Greg Donahue
During the 1930s New Jersey -- especially around Newark -- became an epicenter of German Bund (read Nazi) activism on the Atlantic Coast, which made sense because that part of NJ was also the epicenter for Klan activities.
But Newark was also a major hub for the Jewish mob under Abner 'Longie' Zwillman, known as the "Al Capone of New Jersey," who decided that if nobody else was going to do anything about the goddamn Nazis, he was. This is from the Amazon blurb (and I want you to know the book more than lives up to it):
Zwillman helped organize a group of ex-boxers, factory workers, and students to defend the city’s Jewish interests. The group dubbed themselves the Minutemen - ready at a moment’s notice - and took to breaking up Nazi gatherings using an intimidating combination of stink bombs, baseball bats, brass knuckles, and pure chutzpah.
Greg Donahue’s The Minuteman tells the story of one of Newark’s native sons - ex-prizefighter and longtime Zwillman enforcer Sidney Abramowitz, aka Nat Arno - who took over leadership of the Minutemen in 1934 and made it his personal business to put an end to what he saw as the homegrown Nazi movement’s "anti-American" activities. For six years, Arno and his crew of vigilantes battled Newark’s Nazis at every turn.
If you simply do not do audiobooks, or you can't access Audible, there is an alternative, which is a much larger, more in-depth and academic study of the entire topic of Nazis operating in pre-WW2 New Jersey:
The key takeaway here is that vigilante violence against Nazis is a proud American tradition, and there are implications for today.
The next one is critically important as it not only re-examines political violence from the perspective of Black Abolitionists before the Civil War, but also provides one of the most eloquent, well-constructed arguments that there are times and issues wherein raising at least the possibility of political violence is absolutely necessary to fight tyranny and move society forward.
From its origins in the 1750s, the white-led American abolitionist movement adhered to principles of'moral suasion'and nonviolent resistance as both religious tenet and political strategy. But by the 1850s, the population of enslaved Americans had increased exponentially, and such legislative efforts as the Fugitive Slave Act and the Supreme Court's 1857 ruling in the Dred Scott case effectively voided any rights black Americans held as enslaved or free people.
As conditions deteriorated for African Americans, black abolitionist leaders embraced violence as the only means of shocking Northerners out of their apathy and instigating an antislavery war.In Force and Freedom, Kellie Carter Jackson provides the first historical analysis exclusively focused on the tactical use of violence among antebellum black activists. Through rousing public speeches, the bourgeoning black press, and the formation of militia groups, black abolitionist leaders mobilized their communities, compelled national action, and drew international attention.
Drawing on the precedent and pathos of the American and Haitian Revolutions, African American abolitionists used violence as a political language and a means of provoking social change. Through tactical violence, argues Carter Jackson, black abolitionist leaders accomplished what white nonviolent abolitionists could not: creating the conditions that necessitated the Civil War. Force and Freedom takes readers beyond the honorable politics of moral suasion and the romanticism of the Underground Railroad and into an exploration of the agonizing decisions, strategies, and actions of the black abolitionists who, though lacking an official political voice, were nevertheless responsible for instigating monumental social and political change.
If you do audiobooks it is also available from Audible.
This next one I mention with some diffidence, as it is by my good friend Dr. Yohuru Williams. The diffidence is not about recommending it to you, but in terms of recommending it to you via free or used copies that will send him not a penny in royalties. Nonetheless, confident in my knowledge that he wants the word out there "by any means necessary," here goes:
Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement by Yohuru Williams, in a free pdf from Anna's Archive or a copy for less than $7.00 (including postage) from Abe Books. The blurb:
The African American struggle for civil rights in the twentieth century is one of the most important stories in American history. With all the information available, however, it is easy for even the most enthusiastic reader to be overwhelmed. In Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement, Yohuru Williams has synthesized the complex history of this period into a clear and compelling narrative. Considering both the Civil Rights and Black Power movements as distinct but overlapping elements of the Black Freedom struggle, Williams looks at the impact of the struggle for Black civil rights on housing, transportation, education, labor, voting rights, culture, and more, and places the activism of the 1950s and 60s within the context of a much longer tradition reaching from Reconstruction to the present day.
Exploring the different strands within the movement, key figures and leaders, and its ongoing legacy, Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement is the perfect introduction for anyone seeking to understand the struggle for Black civil rights in America.
Trust me, considerations of political violence are included; watch the arguments unfold.
War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America's Colony by Nelson A. Denis (from Anna's Archive and Abe Books):
The powerful, untold story of the 1950 revolution in Puerto Rico and the long history of U.S. intervention on the island, that the New York Times says "could not be more timely." In 1950, after over fifty years of military occupation and colonial rule, the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico staged an unsuccessful armed insurrection against the United States. Violence swept through the island: assassins were sent to kill President Harry Truman, gunfights roared in eight towns, police stations and post offices were burned down. In order to suppress this uprising, the US Army deployed thousands of troops and bombarded two towns, marking the first time in history that the US government bombed its own citizens.
Nelson A. Denis tells this powerful story through the controversial life of Pedro Albizu Campos, who served as the president of the Nationalist Party. A lawyer, chemical engineer, and the first Puerto Rican to graduate from Harvard Law School, Albizu Campos was imprisoned for twenty-five years and died under mysterious circumstances. By tracing his life and death, Denis shows how the journey of Albizu Campos is part of a larger story of Puerto Rico and US colonialism.
Through oral histories, personal interviews, eyewitness accounts, congressional testimony, and recently declassified FBI files, War Against All Puerto Ricans tells the story of a forgotten revolution and its context in Puerto Rico's history, from the US invasion in 1898 to the modern-day struggle for self-determination. Denis provides an unflinching account of the gunfights, prison riots, political intrigue, FBI and CIA covert activity, and mass hysteria that accompanied this tumultuous period in Puerto Rican history.
This book 100% delivers -- it is not only eye-opening but written like a thriller.
Non-fiction threats to American democracy:
Most people will be shocked to learn that in 1933 a cabal of wealthy industrialists—in league with groups like the K.K.K. and the American Liberty League—planned to overthrow the U.S. government in a fascist coup. Their plan was to turn discontented veterans into American'brown shirts,'depose F.D.R., and stop the New Deal. They clandestinely asked Medal of Honor recipient and Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler to become the first American Caesar. He, though, was a true patriot and revealed the plot to journalists and to Congress. In a time when a President has invoked national security to circumvent constitutional checks and balances, this episode puts the spotlight on attacks upon our democracy and the individual courage needed to repel them.
"The Plots Against the President" follows Roosevelt as he struggled to right the teetering nation, armed with little more than indomitable optimism and the courage to try anything. His bold New Deal experiments provoked a backlash from both extremes of the political spectrum. Wall Street bankers threatened by FDR's policies made common cause with populist demagogues like Huey Long and Charles Coughlin. But just how far FDR's enemies were willing to go to thwart him has never been fully explored.
Two startling events that have been largely ignored by historians frame Sally Denton's swift, tense narrative of a year of fear: anarchist Giuseppe Zangara's assassination attempt on Roosevelt, and a plutocrats' plot to overthrow the government that would come to be known as the Wall Street Putsch.
Then there is Silent Coup: The Removal of a President by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin (Anna's Archive and Abe Books) which argues that almost everything you think you know about Watergate and Nixon's removal from office is wrong. A lot of people tried really hard to debunk this one when it came out. Nothing has really succeeded:
This is the true story of betrayal at the nation's highest level. Unfolding with the suspenseful pace of a le Carre spy thriller, it reveals the personal motives and secret political goals that combined to cause the Watergate break-in and destroy Richard Nixon. Investigator Len Colodny and journalist Robert Gettlin relentlessly pursued the people who brought down the president. Their revelations shocked the world and forever changed our understanding of politics, of journalism, and of Washington behind closed doors. Dismantling decades of lies, Silent Coup tells the truth
Finally in this category we have The Campaign of the Century: Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics by Greg Mitchell (Anna's Attic and Abe Books):
A colorful account of California's 1934 gubernatorial race, a forerunner of today's high-decibel, high-tech electioneering. Upton Sinclair, author of the meat-packing expos‚ The Jungle and a prominent Socialist who became a Democrat only a year before the general election, electrified millions with his EPIC (End Poverty in California) movement--and at the same time alarmed, in Mitchell's words, ``an array of powerful enemies almost unparalleled in American politics,'' including William Randolph Hearst, Herbert Hoover, and film-mogul L.B. Mayer. Mitchell (Truth...and Consequences, 1981) follows the nine-week campaign almost day by day, from the morning after Sinclair's astonishing primary victory to his November defeat at the hands of the lackluster, reactionary GOP incumbent, Frank Merriam.
In between, California became a laboratory for the modern negative mass-media campaign, as Sinclair's enemies wedded some tried-and-true tactics (slush funds, dirty tricks, voter intimidation, biased reporting by nearly all of the state's 700 newspapers) to some disturbingly effective new ones: a campaign consultant to manage a gubernatorial contest, polling, a direct-mail operation, even newsreels (precursors of TV commercials) that attacked Sinclair. For a history as epic as the campaign that inspired it, Mitchell has found additional dash and drama in a wealth of primary source materials, contemporary newspaper accounts, and interviews, unfolding the campaign through the eyes of dozens of politicians, entertainers, and other public figures, including FDR, Charlie Chaplin, Melvin Belli, Pat Brown, James Cagney, and H.L. Mencken. An entertaining chronicle of the consummation of the unholy alliance of Madison Avenue, Hollywood, and politics.
This is not only an amazing story, it is an amazing book.
Now the fiction.
Let's start with the original classic, It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (Anna's Archive; Abe Books), which chronicles sort of an alternate history in which during the 1936 election Senator Buzz Windrip, an over-the-top American fascist who would have no comparable example until 2016. There follows a not-so-slow slide into an authoritarian state followed by a straight-out dictatorship. The book is modeled on what Sinclair saw happening in Germany.
The first chapter is annoying; it is typically overblown Sinclair satire, but then the narrative settles down into a slow, horrifying destruction of America. The ending is ambiguous; the bad guys still rule America but a Bernie Sanders-like former Senator is up in Canada carrying on the fight.
In 1940, newly arrived Science Fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein gave Lewis's novel a sequel of sorts, entitled "'If This Goes On --'" that might also been titled "It DID happen here." Heinlein's novel is the story of the revolt against a theocracy imposed on American by the wonderfully gruesomely named Prophet Nehemiah Scudder.
The flashbacks in the narrative to HOW Scudder took over the country seem eerie applicable today.
The most interesting thing about the novel, however, is that it exists in two very different forms. The original was published as a two-part serial in Astounding Science Fiction in 1940. It is somewhat crude though very energetic -- Heinlein was at the very beginning of learning his craft as a writer. Around 1950, when all of his "Future History" stories were being gathered into a paperback anthology, Heinlein rewrote and significantly lengthened the novel, claiming that crudeness as his excuse.
But that was not the only reason -- or even the primary reason for the rewrite. In 1940 Heinlein was very much a committed liberal Democrat (a supporter of Upton Sinclair, mentioned above), and his wife Leslyn joined him in his affiliations while also working almost as a silent collaborator in some of his writing.
By 1950, however, Heinlein. and Leslyn had divorced right after WW2 (among other things she had descended into alcoholism), and he married again (for the third time, actually) to Virginia Gerstenfeld, a WAVE officer he'd met and fallen in love with while he was working as a civilian researcher at the Philadelphia Navy Year between 1942-1945. "Ginny," as she become affectionately known by his later legions of fans, was at the other end of the political spectrum, a hardline libertarian. In that marriage Heinlein himself moved rapidly to the right and became a libertarian bordering on anarcho-capitalist while still remaining an ardent American patriot.
When he rewrote ITGO, therefore, almost the entire political subtext of the novel changed. Even the girl that the hero ended up with changed, in a metamorphosis that some see being reflective of the author's real life (a charge he denied for the remainder of his life). The overall set-up and plot remains the same, but the political commentary is QUITE different. It's worth reading both of them, though I would recommend reading the later version first. It makes it much easier to spot the differences.
The later version, appearing in the anthology "The Past Through Tomorrow" is at Anna's Archive and Abe Books. To read the original serialized version used to be quite difficult, as it was never reprinted and finding an old copy of Astounding could be both difficult and pricey. However, today, the Luminist League has made a concerted effort to digitize these old pulps, and free pdf copies of February 1940 (part 1) and March 1940 (part 2) are easily available.
Before I leave Heinlein, I'd like also to call attention to one of his short stories, written in about 1946, which is both related to, and not related to the former novel. Heinlein once wrote an essay called, "Concerning Stories Not Written," in which he admitted that he had originally intended to write two prequels to "'If This Goes On '" but couldn't bring himself to do it because they were both so negative and neither had a happy ending.
The first story, "The Sound of His Wings," was to have chronicled the rise of Nehemiah Scudder from obscurity to being a major evangelist and then US Senator before he ran for President. The second one, "The Stone Pillow," was to have told the story of the resistance during the long years of the religious dictatorship. It was not a happy story, because all the resisters are either killed or tortured to death by the Prophet's Guard. Heinlein called it "The Stone Pillow" in a reference to Biblical martyrs being put into prisons to await death on beds of stone with only a block of granite to use as a pillow. Heinlein said they were just too negative for him to write.
But in 1946 and faced with the reality, as he perceived it. that the United States might someday be conquered through atomic warfare and occupied by an enemy nation, he went back to the theme of "The Stone Pillow" to write the short story "Free Men." This is the undramatic story of the American resistance to that occupation in the long dark years wherein the enemy seemed forever unbeatable. Heinlein writes of the people who simply kept resisting their oppressors even when to continue seemed the height of foolishness. The neat trick in the story is that you never know when it is taking place, and you can't even tell who has conquered the United States. Heinlein said he intended it to represent any occupied people at any time, in any place.
It is not long, but it speaks to me in terms of what may lie ahead. Find it at Anna's Archive of Abe Books.
Stanley G. Weinbaum became instantly famous in science fiction in the July 1934 issue of Wonder Tales, in which he published one of the most beloved and influential stories in all of SF (to this day), "A Martian Odyssey." It has long been hailed -- appropriately so -- as one of the first SF stories to actually make the effort to create an entire alien ecology AND a smart alien that thought nothing like human beings, but yet was smart enough to communicate with them. At age thirty-two, it made Weinbaum the most sought-after name in science fiction, and he wrote about a dozen more complete stories and left another dozen partially completed ones before ...
... he died of cancer in December 1935 at the age of thirty-three.
Still his name was so big that editors milked it for as long as possible. They slowly published the unpublished stories (even the ones that really weren't that good), and finally hit on the idea of enlisting other writers to complete some of the fragments. Amazing's nineteen-year-old editor (I kid you not) Ray Palmer talked one of Weinbaum's writer friends, Ralph Milne Farley, into finishing "The Revolution of 1950."
Farley was something of a hack, but he did a good enough job with this one that it is effectively impossible to see the seams where two different writers worked on it. It is a very unusual story: part dystopian when a once-thoughtful and judicious President turns into a tyrant and shreds the Constitution; part adventure story as a young aide-de-camp becomes involved in the resistance; and part mystery story as the reader is tasked with guessing precisely what happened to Steel Jeffries (what a presidential name!) to so change his personality.
It is also the earliest -- and only for the next four decades -- science fiction story to deal with a transgender character in what, for the times, was pretty remarkable detail. (I have often wondered if Weinbaum or Farley had learned anything about the transgender surgeries being pioneered in Germany about the time that they wrote.) I cannot tell you much without spoiling the whole thing, but there are several scenes in which one -- cis-male -- character deals with his feelings of passion and love for a transgender individual.
It is not a work of art, but it is a major milestone, I think, in depictions of gender non-conforming individuals during the pulp era. (And as far as I can tell from the reader responses over the next few months, absolutely nobody was offended by it.)
Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey (Anna's Archive and Abe Books) appeared in 1962 and dominated the bestseller lists for months (we don't know precisely how long because there was a three-month newspaper strike in the middle of its run). The novel dealt with something that no American seemed to believe possible: a general offficer's coup against the President of the United States.
Later Burt Lancaster would play the general in the film, and it was honestly the best performance of his career.
I include this here because I think that, in a year or four, especially if elections are somehow postponed, there may come a time when the US military does think to intervene in politics. It is worth examining and both novel & book are exceptionally well done. You can actually find the entire film for free on YouTube.
There's another piece of intriguing trivia about this book before we leave it. Originally, when the hardback came out in 1962, the President's name was Lyman Johnson. By the time that the paperback was scheduled to come out in early 1964 (just ahead of the movie), JFK had been assassinated, and everybody involved with the book realized that "Lyman Johnson" was way too close to "Lyndon Johnson" for comfort. So they changed the name in the paperback edition and all subsequent hardback editions to "Jordan Lyman."
Only one problem: I have a copy of the first paperback edition, and while they changed the name in the story, somebody forgot to check the blurb inside the front cover, which still clear identified the President as "Lyman Johnson." Both the first hardback and paperback editions are, therefore, widely sought and pretty damn expensive.
With reference to LBJ -- however fictionalized -- we come to Promises to Keep by George Bernau (Anna's Archive; Abe Books), a 1989 political thriller that's kind of a hybrid of the Allen Drury "doorstop" political novels and early Robert Ludlum. But it's the premise that draws me, and makes me consider a variety of realities in our system. The lightly fictionalized President Cassidy (JFK) is shot on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, and Vice President Clemons (LBJ) is sworn into office that night. But in this version, after months and months of recovery, President Cassiday is moving toward being able to reclaim his position. Problem is, time and. policy have marched on, and the acting President is not quite sure he wants to give way ...
As a thriller it's not quite top tier, but it does raise some very real questions about an injured President or just one who might, say, have a stroke at age 78 ... (Note: there is a real life parallel here, that you can find by reading Richard Reeves' Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination [Anna's Archive, Abe Books] which reveals the depth of the deceptions performed by the White House to downplay the mental and physical health impacts of the assassination attempt on Reagan. He was literally not capable of exercising the office for months, which his staff keep very, very quiet -- and possibly even from VP Bush.
Nixon is the fictionalized target of The Last President, by Michael Kurland and S. W. Barton (Anna's Archive; Abe Books). Kurland and Barton were, honestly, workmanlike hacks as authors, but for once in their careers they managed something relatively special if largely unnoticed: a thriller about what happened if Nixon had been far more aggressive in his response to Watergate, and had spiraled toward dictatorship rather than finally, reluctantly, accepting the Constitutional realities that led to his resignation.
The Last President takes us all the way to the brink of military coup, and -- for those of us who lived through that period -- is chillingly evocative of the things we feared might happen. It is also, in many ways, a mediation on what might happen in our immediate future.
I certainly do not expect anybody to have the time to run out and read all sixteen of these, which is why I have provided as much information as I have, so that you can choose what's important to you.
If you have time for only two, The Minuteman (which is a short listen) and Force and Freedom are absolutely the most important, because both deal with the question of political violence in the face of political repression. Both make an excellent case that in theory and practice it is often not only pragmatically necessary, but a moral imperative.
Happy reading.
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