When you think of the world’s most political bands, it’s hard to look beyond Rage Against The Machine. The band have been champions of challenging the oppressors of the western world and have always encouraged their fans to not only take direct action but to keep themselves well-read and well-informed. As part of their 1996 album release Evil Empire, they delivered a crystalline image of the band they were, who they represented and who their crosshairs were trained on.
The title of the album was picked because of “Ronald Reagan’s slander of the Soviet Union in the eighties, which the band feels could just as easily apply to the United States.” It contained not only a plethora of tracks charged by the nu-metal charge of creativity Tom Morello, Zack De la Rocha, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk were all enjoying in the early embers of their fiery careers, but an image of a pile of revolutionary reads in the liner notes, the likes of which make for one of the most rebellious reading lists we’ve ever come across.
As reported by Radical Reads, the books picked out on the image are some provocative titles. Lead singer and main lyricist for the band, De la Rocha, told MTV at the time, “I certainly didn’t find any of those books at my University High School library. Many of those books may give people new insight into some of the fear and some of the pain they might be experiencing as a result of some of the very ugly policies the government is imposing upon us right now.”
Noting the importance of the books mentioned, which don’t just centre on politics in the strictest sense but encourage the reader to challenge themselves and those around them, the group decided to put the reading list on their official site. For the band, it was important to ensure the fans could connect with not only the group’s music but their ideology too, helping to put “them back in touch with realising that their direct participation in events right now can affect history.”
Any high school teacher will tell you that trying to get people to connect with political through political literature alone is a tough sell, to say the least. The real way to do it is to weave into their consciousness how intertwined politics is to everyday life. Through a selection of books from ranging from Dr Seuss classic The Lorax to books on Bob Marley or Salvador Dali all the way through to the theories and rhetoric of Karl Marx and Noam Chomsky, Rage Against The Machine provide not only a revolutionary reading list but perhaps one of the most essential set of books we’ve seen in a long time. Guitarist Tom Morello studied political science at Harvard so chances are the books contained within this list are worth their weight in gold.
Within the list, there is likely something for every budding revolutionary reader as well as someone keen to expand their mind a little. With a political climate as tense as the one we face in 2020, perhaps it’s about time we all paid a little more attention to these kinds of books and spent lockdown swatting up.
Rage Against The Machine’s revolutionary reading list:
- Live From Death Row by Mumia Abu-Jamal
- Joe Hill by Gibbs M. Smith
- The Mau Mau War Perspective by Frank Ferudi
- The Aesthetic Dimension Toward by Herbert Macuse
- The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After by Chris Harman
- The Media Monopoly by Ben H. Bagdikian
- 50 Ways To Fight Censorship by Dave Marsh
- Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Geamsci’s Political & Cultural Theory by Walter L. Adamson
- The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Gould
- A New Society: Reflections for Today’s World by David Deutschman (Editor)
- The Marx-Engels Reader by Robert C. Tucker (Editor)
- What Uncle Sam Really Wants by Noam Chomsky
- Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol
- Marxism and the New Imperialism by Alex Callinicos
- Rules for Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky
- A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
- The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
- East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio by Richard Romo
- Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by William Blum
- Race for Justice: Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Fight Against The Death Penalty by Leonard Weinglass
- Guerilla Warfare by Che Guevera
- Zapata of Mexico by Peter E. Newell
- Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements by George Breitman
- Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory by Lise Vogel
- Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America by Walter LaFeber
- The Chomsky Reader by James Peck (Editor)
- Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise 1940-1990 by Juan Gomez Quinones
- The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
- What is Communist Anarchism? by Alexander Berkman
- Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson by George Jackson
- Fidel and Religion: Conversations With Frei Betto by Frei Betto
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
- Democracy is in the Streets by James Miller
- Capital, Volume One by Karl Marx
- The Black Panthers Speak by Philip S. Foner (Editor)
- Keeping The Rabble in Line: Interviews with David Barsamian by Noam Chomsky
- Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
- Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koester
- The Culture of Narcissism: American Life of Diminishing Expectations by Christopher Lasch
- Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
- The State and Revolution by V.I. Lenin
- Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
- Kwame Nkrumah by June Milne
- Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton
- The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
- Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
- Another Country by James Baldwin
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- Rebellion from the Roots: Indian uprising in Chiapas by John Ross
- First World: Ha! Ha! Ha! The Zapatista Challenge by Elaine Katzenberger, Editor
- The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda
- Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
- Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
- Essays in Existentialism by Jean-Paul Sartre
- How Real is Real? Confusion, Disinformation, Communication by Paul Watzlawick
- Ghost of Chance by William S. Burroughs
- Popism: The Warhol Sixties by Andy Warhol & Pat Hackett
- Chicana Falsa and Other Stories of Death, Identity, and Oxnard by Michele M. Serros
- Promissory Notes: Women in the Transition to Socialism by Sonia Kruks, Ranya Rapp, Marilyn B. Young, Editors
- Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of a Gay World by George Chauncey
- This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherrie Monzaga, Gloria Anzaluda, Editors
- Subliminal Seduction by Wilson Bryan Key, Editor
- Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity by Michael A. Messner
- Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
- 90 Years of Ford by George H. Dammann
- Illustrated History of Ford by George H. Damman
- The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women Movements in Global Perspective by Amrita Basu
- Miles by Miles Davis
- The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade by Judith Clavir Albert and Stewart Edward Albert
- The Graphic Work by M. C. Escher
- Bob Marley: Spirit Dancer by Bruce W. Talamon
- Dali: The Paintings by Benedikt Taschen, Robert Taschen, Giles Neret
