November 22, 2011

Lewis Lapham’s revolutionary reading list

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In the wake of the two month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, we asked Lewis Lapham, the founder of Lapham’s Quarterly and the former editor of Harper’s, what books he would recommend in order to better understand the current political climate. Lapham wrote in an e-mail, “None of the books on the following list preach revolution, but they provide some of the back story for what we now see in the news footage from Occupy Wall Street.” In order to look to the future, we often have to look into the past for answers, and who else is better equipped to assist us in this journey than one of the most erudite critics we have in this country?

Here is his revolutionary reading list:

American Colossus—H. W. Brands
The Barbaric Heart—Curtis White
The Relentless Revolution—Joyce Appleby
Theory of the Leisure Class—Thorstein Veblen
Folklore of Capitalism—Thurman Arnold
The Big Short—Michael Lewis
Merchant of Venice—William Shakespeare
Rameau’s Nephew—Denis Diderot
Age of Greed—Jeff Maddrick
The Politicos—Matthew Joseph
Are We Rome?—Cullen Murphy
Letter to Commodore Vanderbilt, Letter to the Children Who Sit in Darkness—Mark Twain
Money and Class in America—Lewis H. Lapham

What titles would you add, dear readers?

 

  • Julia Stanley

    This list looks great.  And if it comes from Lewis Lapham it’s definitely a must have. I love e-books so I hope I will find these in this format.
    A friend told me about a good offer from allyoucanbooks, a 15 days trial. I just hope I can find these books there and download them for free.

  • Anonymous

    Neil Postman, _Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business_.Anything by Studs Terkel.

  • http://twitter.com/missuku Frances Uku

    One glaring omission is Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from The Baffler (Lit Magazine), in which Mr. Lapham himself gives the foreword. We’ll put it down to modesty, shall we?

  • johnnyblood

    @twitter-165305876:disqus  I heartily agree with “Commodify”, but there was no modesty involved as he has posted his own “Money and Class in America” at the bottom of the list… Perhaps it was just a ”memory lapse-ham”

    • http://twitter.com/missuku Frances Uku

      Mmm, I did indeed notice. Merely my own attempt at charity, johnnyblood! ;)

  • Drobbins

    Let Us Now Praise Famous Men – James Agee … absolutely belongs.

  • Topher

    Wretched of the Earth-Frantz Fanon

  • Guest

    A revolutionary book was recently published by Melville House: David Graeber’s Debt.

  • Guest

    Obviously: The Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck

  • http://twitter.com/taylorbright taylorbright

    Germinal, In Dubious Battle, Theory of Moral Sentiments

  • http://twitter.com/hyperlocavore Liz McLellan

    From Dictatorship to Democracy – Gene Sharpe
    No Logo – Naomi Klein
    Disaster Capitalism
    Anything by David Korten – The Great Turning

  • http://twitter.com/hyperlocavore Liz McLellan

    I also think OWS should be publishing their lists…. as they are on to something which has obviously escaped their elders.

  • Anonymous

    Unsurprisingly only one of the authors is a woman.

  • Anonymous

    One-Dimensional Man by Marcuse

  • R. Franklin Carter

    This reading list could use a few titles by Noam Chomsky. I nominate The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many, What Uncle Sam Really Wants,  and Manufacturing Consent.

  • Chris Bram

    The Crisis of the Old Order by Arthur Schlesinger. (And shouldn’t that be Matthew Josephson above, not Matthew Joseph?)

  • Jeff Sharlet

    Horizontalism, by Marina Sitrin (CUNY sociologist who introduced the idea of the human mic to OWS and facilitated the 9/17 GA); “Debt” and “Direct Action” by David Graeber, an anthropologist important in the early stages of organization; “A Paradise Built in Hell,” by Rebecca Solnit; “Angels in America” by Tony Kushner

  • Anonymous

    Typical that he would recommend his own work.

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