This past year was rich in scholarship. A few of these books were published in 2022, but I read them this year and felt they had to be on this list since they were so compelling. That includes the first two, The Long Land War by Jo Guldi and Internet for the People by Ben Tarnoff. Guldi’s book is a magisterial account of the history of social, political and economic battles over ownership of land.
Guldi provides a sweeping overview of how colonial power structures, militaries, police forces and laws imposed from above, worked to expand control of land for the few, but in turn have been consistently challenged by social movements and revolutions from below, which have attempted, sometimes successfully, but often not, to redistribute landholding from the few to the many. Guldi is meticulous in identifying the historical patterns that have helped determine the winners and losers in the “Long Land War,” and as such, produces the first book of its kind to be written on such a large and inclusive historical and geographical canvas.
Ben Tarnoff also examines structures of power and domination within the history of the Internet, focusing on how public funding was used in the U.S. to develop the architecture of the Internet, only to transfer that architecture to private sector corporations for profit. Tarnoff offers compelling examples of efforts to fight back and create public alternatives to private sector domination of the Internet.
Michael Zweig, an economist and long-time organizer and activist, has written a gem of a book: one of the best introductions on how to think about the relationship between theory, practice, and building successful social movements. Instead of getting caught up in the counterproductive exercise of separating class from race and gender, Zweig articulates what should be a common sense notion for people on the left: advancements toward greater equality in each and all of these areas: class, race and gender, should be applauded. Zweig provides a useful roadmap of how to conceptualize the fight for social justice in a way that should be of use for a wide range of social justice movements.
Quinn Slobodian, whose previous book The Globalists tracked the origins of neoliberal ideology from the 1920s and 1930s to the present, examines how libertarians, especially anarcho-capitalists, have championed special economic zones as areas of uber-privilege for capitalist owners—free of any public accountability or democratic control. Within these zones, which have proliferated under neoliberal global capitalism, capitalist ownership enclaves determine winners and losers through monetary exchange, which then sorts out the successful from the unsuccessful based on private capitalist accumulation, absent intermediaries, other than—and this is an important caveat: a militarized and authoritarian state structure that serves to protect wealth from democratic politics. It’s an eye-opening account of the marriage between libertarian ideology and authoritarianism.
The other books on my list cover a wide range of provocative topics in a thoughtful and informed way. Christina Gerhardt offers a compelling account of the impact of climate change from the bottom up, profiling the islands that are slowly and steadily disappearing through the eyes and minds of islanders themselves. Malcom Harris examines the historical evolution of Silicon Valley, especially its connections to systemic racism and eugenics, the military-industrial complex, corporate welfare and corporate power blocs that have used their privilege to monopolize their positions in contemporary capitalism. Antony Loewenstein traces the history of the Israeli state from a militarized domestic apartheid to a global seller of weapons to dictatorships around the world. Gary Anderson has edited an important collection of articles showing how the creation and expansion of NATO has always been firmly grounded in the interests of dominant corporations and states, not so much in the interests of the public.
Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire have written a must-read account of the corporate forces that have engaged in a decades long push to privatize public schools in the U.S. and the consequences of these policies, as well as the efforts to fight back. Will Bunch identifies the corporatization of universities, with less public funding, rising tuition and dependence on large-scale student debt, as systemic drivers of inequality in the U.S.
Kerry Howley in Bottoms Up examines the growing infrastructure of the U.S. surveillance state, especially its lack of accountability and its treatment of whistleblowers. Joe Posnanski is a beautiful writer of baseball history and his new book captures many of the joys of fandom.
Victor Lavalle’s Lone Women is a wonderful narrative that combines science fiction with social history in its story of an African-American woman homesteading from California to Montana in the early 20th century in search of a new beginning, but also in possession of both a curse and a revenge for wrongs committed in the past. Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi wrote a science fiction novel about The Centre, a language institute that is capable of training individuals to speak any foreign language fluently within just a couple of weeks, but at a significant price.
Steven Conn’s Lies of the Land is a much-needed corrective to simplistic tropes about rural America. Conn argues that the same corporations that have dominated urban areas also prevail in rural America, from military-industrial corporations, retail chains, extractive industries, and manufacturing plants. There is a class structure here from which the politics follow, rather than just a disgruntled angry base that votes for Donald Trump. Naomi Klein has written one of her best books that captures the larger socioeconomic and political implications of identity creation, re-creation and marketing through social media, led by Klein’s own experience of being confused for Naomi Wolf, a deep state conspiracist of the far right. Gilbert Achcar has published a collection of his excellent and perceptive essays on the ways that the U.S. has used the post-Cold War period to entrench a set of expansive, militaristic policies in search of new enemies. Costas Lapavitsas has edited a book, The State of Capitalism, that has several worthwhile contributions useful for understanding trends in global corporate power. Evan Drellich examines the ethical bankruptcy of major league baseball’s Houston Astros by locating their cheating scandal within a larger use of baseball analytics in which winning becomes the justification for scrapping morality, not that this is terribly new or novel, but a compelling read.
View From Left Field 