Books by DSA Members

Editors, Democratic Left (magazine)

We have limited space for book reviews, but once a year, we publish a list of books written by DSA members within the past three years. We can only list a book once. If your book is not here, please notify us for next year. Please buy directly from the author or from your local bookstore instead of from an online, non-union behemoth.

Browning, Preston, Struggling for the Soul of Our Country, Wipf and Stock, 2016. Browning asks how the life of citizenship influences our common future and addresses the spiritual dimension of the crises facing the United States.

Early, Steve, Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City, Beacon Press, 2017. Veteran labor reporter and DSA activist Steve Early tells the story of 15 years of community organizing that curbed the power of Big Oil in a California town.

Edis, Taner, Islam Evolving: Radicalism, Reformation, and the Uneasy Relationship with the Secular West, Prometheus Books, 2016. An exploration of how Islam adapts to modernity by a U.S. physicist raised in Turkey.

Ellis, Frederick has republished, in a facsimile edition, Debs: His Life, Writings And Speeches (1908), long out of print. Democratic Left readers get a 25% discount by sending a check for $43.75 plus $6 shipping. Email [email protected] for details.

Gutman, W. E., A Paler Shade of Red, Memoirs of a Radical, now available in an electronic version. Chronicles the life of a journalist who covered world politics from the Soviet Union to Central America.

Hogan, Patrick, Imagining Kashmir: Emplotment and Colonialism, University of Nebraska Press, 2016. This book “examines cinematic and literary imaginings of the Kashmir region’s conflicts and diverse citizenship, analyzing a wide range of narratives from writers and directors such as Salman Rushdie, Bharat Wakhlu, Mani Ratnam, and Mirza Waheed.”

Isserman, Maurice, Continental Divide, A History of American Mountaineering, W.W. Norton & Company, 2016. Through mountaineering, Isserman explores the creation of the National Parks Service and the modern environmentalist movement.

Kazin, Michael, War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918, Simon and Schuster, 2017. For three years, a coalition of conservatives, liberals, and leftists kept the United States out of the First World War. Kazin tells what held them together and what drove them apart.

La Botz, Dan, What Went Wrong? The Nicaraguan Revolution: A Marxist Analysis, Brill (September 2016), Haymarket, September 2017. Comprehensive work on why the revolution failed.

Meakes, David, Perspective: The Golden Rule, Outskirts Press, 2016. Drawing on a long lifetime of engagement in this autobiography, the author presents a plan for world peace.

Nottingham, Bill, and Harper, Charles, An updated and enlarged version of The Great Escape that Changed Africa’s Future (formerly Escape from Portugal—The Church in Action; The secret flight of 60 African students to France), includes interviews with African leaders.

Schwartz, Richard H., Who Stole My Religion? Revitalizing Judaism and Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal Our Imperiled Planet, Urim publications, June 2016, second edition, with new material. The author goes to the roots of the religion to find an approach to modern problems.

Sheldon, Kathleen, Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa, second edition (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016). Although aimed at an academic audience, this book is useful to anyone seeking to know more on the topic.

Yockey, Roger, People Are #1 is the story of thousands of union grocery workers who were on strike for 81 days in 1989. Send a check for $11 payable to Roger Yockey, 5910 West Lincoln Ave. #23, Yakima, Washington 98908. All money from the sale of the book goes for clean water projects in Latin America.

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of the Democratic Left magazine.

Individually signed posts do not necessarily reflect the views of DSA as an organization or its leadership. Democratic Left blog post submission guidelines can be found here.