“The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality.” —Muhammad Ali on refusing to fight in Vietnam

The myth of American innocence is perpetually reinvented in the face of an unprecedented history of violence, upheld by bipartisan consensus and a pliant corporate media.

Alongside its history of settler colonialism, cruel border policies, and overt and covert military intervention around the world, the US also has been home to a long tradition of resistance to war and militarism—often including the participation of active-duty soldiers and veterans. There are histories that urgently need to be remembered.

To better equip the movement against imperialism for the struggles to come, we offer a reading list on the tremendous violence carried out by the American Empire, and the heroic efforts of those who oppose it.

No to imperialism. Open the borders. Refugees welcome. Unconditional support to war resisters. 

In this award-winning book, Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance leading to the present campaigns against fossil fuel pipelines, such as the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the Indian Wars, the Pick-Sloan dams, the American Indian Movement, and the campaign for Indigenous rights at the United Nations.

A leading international relations expert uncovers the key stages that led from the end of the Cold War to the War in Ukraine.

A wide-ranging and incisive collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky, addressing the urgent questions of this tumultuous moment.

Acclaimed scholar Andrew Bacevich provides a much-needed and comprehensive critique of recent US national security policies in both the Trump and Biden administrations.

In a sweep through seven centuries from 1350 to 2050, the work explains how catastrophes—pandemics, wars, and climate crisis—have shaped the destiny of empires and world orders.

As the rivalry between the US and China enters a dangerous new phase, reaffirming the politics of anti-imperialism is a task more important than ever.

The remarkable true story of an Indigenous family who fought back, over multiple generations, against the world-destroying power of settler colonial violence.

An urgent and accessible analysis of the key structures of state violence in our world today, and a clarion call to action for their abolition.

In Border and Rule, one of North America’s foremost thinkers and immigrant rights organizers delivers an unflinching examination of migration as a pillar of global governance and gendered racial class formation.

A captivating book: part debate, part dialogue, part lively and detailed familial correspondence between two razor-sharp writers convening on what it means to get free as the world spins into some new orbit. In a genre-defying exchange, the authors collectively envision the possibilities for more liberatory futures during a historic year of Indigenous land defense, prison strikes, and global-Black-led rebellions against policing.

The border regimes of imperialist states have brutally oppressed migrants throughout the world. To enforce their borders, these states have constructed a new digital fortress with far-reaching and ever-evolving new technologies. This pathbreaking volume exposes these insidious means of surveillance, control, and violence.

In this still-indispensable collection of essays written in the 1950s and 60s, Hal Draper grapples with the role of the United States in the world, situating post-war American imperialism in a global picture of capitalist competition and expansion.

Staughton Lynd was one of the principal intellectuals and activists making the radical argument that the U.S. intervention in Vietnam was illegal under domestic and international law.

Imagining the future of Gaza beyond the cruelties of occupation and Apartheid, Light in Gaza is a powerful contribution to understanding Palestinian experience.

A former US Army Ranger walks across America for a fallen comrade and finds his voice as a war resister. 

A compelling and timely account of the corruption, corporatization, and militarization of science in the United States.

Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan describe, in their own words, the crimes of war they witnessed.

A brilliant indictment of US imperial power.

In these intimate and wide-ranging conversations, Eqbal Ahmad discusses nationalism, ethnic conflict, the politics of memory, and liberation struggles around the world. 

The Changing Face of Empire is a devastating anatomy of the U.S. military’s new six-point program for twenty-first-century war. 

Explores the distinctive instruments of American ascent to global domination and hegemony--including covert intervention, client elites, psychological torture, and surveillance. 

 A reporter’s first-hand, close-up-and-personal look at the impact of our recent wars on America’s unlucky soldiers.

From the election from hell to the future according to Donald Trump, A Nation Unmade by War surveys American exceptionalism in the age of absurdity. 

My Seditious Heart collects the work of a two-decade period when Arundhati Roy devoted herself to the political essay as a way of opening up space for justice, rights, and freedoms in an increasingly hostile world. Radical and superbly readable, these essays speak always in defense of the collective, of the individual and of the land, in the face of the destructive logic of financial, social, religious, military, and governmental elites. 

Michael Schwartz gets behind the headlines, revealing the real dynamics of the Iraq debacle and its legacy. 

From Mark Twain to the movement against the war in Vietnam, this is the story of ordinary Americans challenging empire.

The Violent American Century addresses the U.S.-led transformations in war conduct and strategizing that followed 1945.

Investigative journalist and bestselling author Nick Turse exposes the shocking expansion of the U.S. military’s covert wars in Africa. 

An Iraq war veteran's powerful testament to the true cost of war.

This classic book is the first truly comprehensive history of American imperialism.

How We Go Home shares contemporary Indigenous stories in the long and ongoing fight to protect Native land and life.

This thoughtful, in-depth account of Native struggles against environmental and cultural degradation features chapters on the Seminoles, the Anishinaabeg, the Innu, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Mohawks, among others. 

In this rich dialogue on surveillance, empire, and power, Arundhati Roy and John Cusack describe meeting NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden in Moscow.

In this essential work, journalist Ali Abunimah takes a comprehensive look at the shifting tides of the politics of Palestine and the Israelis in a neoliberal world and makes a compelling and surprising case for why the Palestine solidarity movement just might win.

This edited volume makes an impassioned and informed case for the central place of Palestine in socialist organizing and of socialism in the struggle to free Palestine.

Joe Allen examines the lessons of the Vietnam era with the eye of both a dedicated historian and an engaged participant in today’s antiwar movement.

The story of the soldiers who spoke their conscience and helped end the war in Vietnam.

This collection of Howard Zinn's speeches on protest movements, racism, war, and US history, many never before published, covers more than four decades of his active engagement with the audiences he inspired with his humor, insight, and clarity.

Indefensible powerfully argues for a genuine internationalism that supports mass struggles for freedom and democracy, no matter what regime they are fighting against, and suggests steps that can be taken to end ongoing violence while promoting democracy and human rights.

An in-depth look at Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and the preexisting crisis of colonialism that conditioned this historic disaster.

A Voice of Witness collection of oral histories that tell the stories of youth refugees fleeing their home countries in Central America and traveling for hundreds of miles seeking safety and protection in the United States.

A story of resistance, repression, and US policy in Honduras in the aftermath of a violent military coup.

For as long as there have been rich nations and poor nations, debt has been a powerful force for maintaining the unequal relations between them. In this ground-breaking history, renowned economist Éric Toussaint argues for a radical reversal of this balance of accounts through the repudiation of sovereign debt.

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