The Rebel Library.

I suppose, in some ways at least, I read to find out who I am. It’s certainly true about a lot of my political reading. I know what I believe – politically – but I’m not 100% sure why I believe what I do. Thinking about it recently I can’t help but think that at least some of it was picked up in brief conversations with my Dad. I certainly can’t remember sitting down with him at any point and actually talking politics but there where comments here and there about the right thing to do that must have seeped into my psyche over the decades. He was most definitely on the Left. Whether he would’ve described himself as a Socialist I don’t know but he did mention a book on several occasions that stuck with me and which I picked up recently which strongly hints in that direction: The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell first published in 1914. I really need to read it as it clearly made an impression on him.

Those who know me as well as those who read this Blog are aware that I have a reputation of being a rebel – or just being plain awkward. Rebellion is something deep in my bones. Mostly I’m fairly happy-go-lucky and wouldn’t say ‘boo to a goose’. I am generally as inoffensive as them come – until that is something or someone pushes up against my rebellious side. When that happens and when I consider myself in the right nothing can move me. The barricades go up, the flags are hoisted and I’m ready to take on the world. Where, oh where, does THAT come from? It’s probably why I’ve had a lifelong interest in (and admiration for) rebels and rebellions. Naturally over the decades I’ve read quite a bit about both but it’s only fairly recently that I’ve been making more of an effort to dig deeper and understand rebels and therefore, hopefully, understand myself a bit more. As part of that I created the R4 category for books (Revolt, Rebellion, Resistance and Revolution) to try and put the many threads of the subject and my search to understand it all in one place. Presently it’s pretty much a shotgun approach to things as I tease out where the boundaries are and where the core is. I’m still working on that but I do think I’m moving in the right direction. I guess only time will tell. But so far here’s the present list of books in the Rebel Library. It won’t teach anyone how to rebel or to plan a successful rebellion but it should give food for though. I know it has with me.

 Guerrilla Warfare by Che Guevara
 Marx – A Very Short Introduction by Peter Singer
Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man by Christopher Hitchens
 The Gunpowder Plot – Terror and Faith in 1605 by Antonia Fraser
The Spanish Civil War by Antony Beevor
 The Rebel by Albert Camus
1968 – The Year that Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky
The Evils of Revolution by Edmund Burke
Politics of Fear – Beyond Left and Right by Frank Furedi
Crisis? What Crisis? – Britain in the 1970’s by Alwyn W Turner
The Motorcycle Diaries – Notes on a Latin American Journey by Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara
The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz
Easter 1916 – The Irish Rebellion by Charles Townshend
Strange Days Indeed – The Golden Age of Paranoia by Francis Wheen
The Resistance – The French Fight against the Nazis by Matthew Cobb
The Spartacus War by Barry Strauss
Culture of Fear Revisited by Frank Furedi
Towards the Light – The Story of the struggles for Liberty and Rights that made the modern West by A C Grayling
Communism – A Very Short Introduction by Leslie Holmes
Terrorism – A Very Short Introduction by Charles Townshend
The Rebel Raiders – The Astonishing History of the Confederacy’s Secret Navy by James Tertius deKay
The Sea King – The Life of James Iredell Waddell by Gary McKay
Liberty in the Age of Terror - A Defence of Civil Liberties and Enlightenment Values by A C Grayling
Afgantsy – The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89 by Rodric Braithwaite
The Rebirth of History – Times of Riots and Uprisings by Alain Badiou
The Terrible Year – The Paris Commune, 1871 by Alistair Horne
Revolution 1989 – The Fall of the Soviet Empire by Victor Sebestyen
On The Spartacus Road – A Spectacular Journey Through Ancient Italy by Peter Stothard
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death by Albert Camus
Americans in Paris – Life and Death under Nazi Occupation 1940-1944 by Charles Glass
The Unfree French – Life under the Occupation by Richard Vinen
1848 – Year of Revolution by Mike Rapport
Eleven Days in August – The Liberation of Paris in 1944 by Matthew Cobb
Iron Curtain – The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56 by Anne Applebaum
Hope in the Dark – The Untold History of People Power by Rebecca Solnit
Butcher & Bolt – Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan by David Loyn
Churchill’s First War – Young Winston and the Fight against the Taliban by Con Couchlin
Return of a King – The Battle for Afghanistan by William Dalrymple
Making Sense of The Troubles – A History of the Northern Ireland Conflict by David McKittrick and David McVea
Fatal Path – British Government and Irish Revolution 1910-1922 by Ronan Fanning
The Republic – The Fight for Irish Independence 1918-1923 by Charles Townshend
The Rebel Sell – How the Counterculture became the Consumer Culture by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
Iron Kingdom – The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 by Christopher Clark
The Downfall of Money – Germany’s Hyperinflation and the Destruction of the Middle Class by Frederick Taylor
The People – The Rise and Fall of the Working Class by Selina Todd
Them and Us – Fighting the Class War 1910-1939 by John Newsinger
Age of Extremes – The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 by Eric Hobsbawm
The Autobiography of Malcolm X with the assistance of Alex Haley
1066 – A New History of the Norman Conquest by Peter Rex
Skis Against the Atom by Knut Haukelid
Travelling with Che Guevara – The Making of a Revolutionary by Alberto Granado
The Free State of Jones – A True Story of Defiance during the American Civil War by Victoria E Bynum
Seize the Time – The Story of The Black Panter Party and Huey P Newton by Bobby Searle
Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P Newton
To Hell and Back – Europe 1914-1949 by Ian Kershaw
Fusiliers – How the British Army lost America but learned how to Fight by Mark Urban
The War of the Flea – A Study of Guerrilla Warfare Theory & Practice by Robert Taber
Clydebuilt – The Blockade Runners, Cruisers and Armoured Rams of the American Civil War by Eric J Graham
The English Rebel – One Thousand Years of Trouble-making from the Normans to the Nineties by David Horspool
Revolutions – A Very Short Introduction by Jack A Goldstone
The General Strike by Margaret Morris
The Empire of Necessity – The Untold History of a Slave Rebellion in the Age of Liberty by Greg Grandin
Shooting in the Dark – Riot Police in Britain by Gerry Northam
Rebels Against the Future – The Luddites and their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age by Kirkpatrick Sale
Rebel Cities – From The Right to the City to the Urban Revolution by David Harvey
How to Stage a Military Coup – From Planning to Execution by David Hebditch and Ken Connor
Why it’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere - The New Global Revolutions by Paul Mason
Governing the World – The History of an Idea by Mark Mazower
Days of Rage – America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence by Bryan Burrough
The Myth of the Strong Leader – Political Leadership in the Modern Age by Archie Brown
The True Believer – Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer
The Road Not Taken – How Britain Narrowly Missed a Revolution 1381-1926 by Frank McLynn