theory

I tend to have a few books going in parallel so I can switch between them when getting through one is becoming a slog, especially because I usually make extensive notes on theory so I can remember it all better.

So what I have read and/or am reading and have finished most of:

The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (lib garbage with no real takeaways but I needed an overview of the history so I had a foundation to work off for further reading; useful for me but I wouldn't recommend)

The Dawn of Everything (some questionable interpretations and lessons but a good recommendation overall)

World-systems Analysis: An Introduction (a pretty foundational text for geopolitical analysis if you use the terms "imperial core" a lot)

The Capital Order - How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (very good, absolutely recommend. really shows how western economic ideas haven't meaningfully progressed since 1920. every addition since then, like fiat currency, feel more like expansion packs on the foundation of neoclassical economics and austerity, and the language of 1920s liberal economics professors is literally indistinguishable from 2020s liberal economics professors. I had the experience of reading how austerity was implemented in Britain and Italy at the same time as Milei was starting his program up in Argentina, and was blown away by how it's literally the same shit.)

Everyday Politics in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (meh, it's okay. vaguely interesting to see how people on the ground reacted to Libya under Gaddafi but it's only really useful if you already have a decent grasp of the history)

Late Victorian Holocausts (macabre subject matter but regardless I love the intersection of hard science and politics/history/economics. really adds a sense of concreteness to them that otherwise can seem free-floating and devoid of context)

Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (what Desai does here is kind of radical actually. It kinda feels like... you know that saying "Things seem impossible until after they happen - then they appear inevitable."? Desai's basically doing that but for the present day. Basically saying "No, actually, the US is not and has never really been a hegemon in the way that the British Empire was, their financial empire and the dollar is built on sand, and many of the reasons why we believe that the US is a hegemon is because those reasons were first stated by Americans who were trying to conjure illusions of their own importance out of nothing." It's a radical way of observing history regardless of whether you agree and I'm only a chapter in and I'm intensely curious to see where it all leads. She wrote this thing in like 2013 and was already predicting multipolarism and dedollarization, so I'm very willing to listen to her)

Might be a few others I can't currently recall. Of course, given all the goddamn articles and shit I go through on a weekly basis, I'm already imbibing a ton of information anyway, so I don't feel too bad about my relatively slow pace.

I don't really have a preset list of books and mostly go off vibes, but I don't like to read the same kind of book consecutively, e.g. I don't read a history book after reading a history book. I also try and read at least as much stuff on more current-day matters as I do about history, due to a fear of spending too much time in the past and not enough time looking at what's going on right now. I don't wanna be one of those people who just endlessly talks about how "Oh god, I wish I could have lived in Italy in 1920, or Russia as a revolutionary, or could have helped the Germans with their revolution... god damn it, we had our chance to overthrow capitalism and we blew it... fuck..." while like, the fucking Palestinians and Yemenis are actively battering down the door of American empire and Russia is taking on NATO and China is trying to develop the world and heighten the contradictions of capitalism. Eyes on the prize.

That being said, I will definitely wanna read Desai's second Geopolitical Economy book, Coronavirus, Capitalism, and War, at some point get through Hudson's Superimperialism because shit keeps getting in the way and I still haven't fucking read it (though I've read enough of his talks and interviews that I think I already grasp quite a lot of his arguments), and intersperse this with books on African communist movements, e.g. Red Africa: Reclaiming Revolutionary Black Politics, as well as works like Dark Emu and Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region. And some works of Marxist feminism and social theory in that vein.