12 must-read politics books like The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber

Cover of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

By: David Graeber

4.20

Format: 692 pages, Hardcover

A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions abo…

"Humans - from this other perspective, which is just as extreme in its own way - are at best an arbitrary constellation of cultural elements, perhaps assembled according to some prevailing spirit, code or ethos, and which society ends up with which ethos is treated as beyond explanation, little more than a random roll of the dice."

-David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

"One might ask, how could that most basic element of all human freedoms, the freedom to make promises and commitments and thus build relationships, be turned into its very opposite: into peonage, serfdom or permanent slavery? It happens, we’d suggest, precisely when promises become impersonal, transferable – in a nutshell, bureaucratized."

-David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

"There is an obvious objection to evolutionary models which assume that our strongest social ties are based on close biological kinship: many humans just don’t like their families very much. And this appears to be just as true of present-day hunter-gatherers as anybody else. Many seem to find the prospect of living their entire lives surrounded by close relatives so unpleasant that they will travel very long distances just to get away from them."

-David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

"In the Middle Ages, most people in other parts of the world who actually knew anything about northern Europe at all considered it an obscure and uninviting backwater full of religious fanatics who, aside from occasional attacks on their neighbours (‘the Crusades’), were largely irrelevant to global trade and world politics. European intellectuals of that time were just rediscovering Aristotle and the ancient world, and had very little idea what people were thinking and arguing about anywhere else."

-David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

If you liked the politics plot in The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber , here is a list of 12 books like this:

Cover of Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism by Michael Parenti

1. Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

By: Michael Parenti

4.41

Format: 166 pages, Paperback

Blackshirts & Reds explores some of the big issues of our time: fascism, capitalism, communism, rev… read more

Similar categories in Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • history
  • politics
  • philosophy
  • nonfiction
  • economics
  • sociology
  • audiobook
"Ecology's implications for capitalism are too horrendous for the capitalist to contemplate."

-Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

"Decentralized parochial autonomy is the graveyard of insurgency-which may be one reason why there has never been a successful anarcho-syndicalist revolution."

-Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

"A joke circulating in Russia in 1992 went like this: Q. What did capitalism accomplish in one year that communism could not do in seventy years? A. Make communism look good."

-Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

"...the [pure socialist] critics [of communist countries] seem unable to apply their own leadership genius to producing a successful revolutionary movement in their own country."

-Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

2. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

By: Mark Fisher

4.00

Format: 176 pages, Paperback

read more

Similar categories in Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Cover of Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott

3. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

By: James C. Scott

4.20

Format: 461 pages, Paperback

Compulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier’s urban planning t… read more

Similar categories in James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • history
  • philosophy
  • nonfiction
  • economics
  • sociology
  • anthropology
"An urban space where the police are the sole agents of order is a very dangerous place."

-James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

"Just as the general design of the city militates against an autonomous public life, so the design of the residential city militates against individuality."

-James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

"The authorized histories of revolutions, as Milovan Djilas points out, “describe the revolution as if it were the fruit of the previously planned action of its leaders."

-James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

"After seizing state power, the victors have a powerful interest in moving the revolution out of the streets and into the museums and schoolbooks as quick as possible, lest the people decide to repeat…"

-James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

Cover of If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution by Vincent Bevins

4. If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution

By: Vincent Bevins

4.28

Format: 337 pages, Hardcover

The story of the recent uprisings that sought to change the world - and what comes next   From 20… read more

Similar categories in Vincent Bevins's If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • history
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • sociology
  • audiobook
"In the history of revolutions, a couple of truisms had already emerged. One is that they are only successful when security forces defect or are defeated in violent conflict. Even if Moa Zedong was be…"

-Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution

Cover of Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will by Robert M. Sapolsky

5. Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

By: Robert M. Sapolsky

4.25

Format: 528 pages, Hardcover

One of our great behavioral scientists, the bestselling author of Behave, plumbs the depths of the … read more

Similar categories in Robert M. Sapolsky's Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • science
  • philosophy
  • nonfiction
  • sociology
  • audiobook
"I’m being diplomatic. Many readers will know of the “replication crisis"

-Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

"Obviously, imposing these classifications on determinism, free will, and moral responsibility is wildly simplified. A key simplification is pretending that most people have clean “yes"

-Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

"You cannot decide all the sensory stimuli in your environment, your hormone levels this morning, whether something traumatic happened to you in the past, the socioeconomic status of your parents, you…"

-Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

Cover of When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut

6. When We Cease to Understand the World

By: Benjamín Labatut

4.14

Format: 193 pages, Kindle Edition

One of The New York Times Book Review ’s 10 Best Books of 2021 Shortlisted for the 2021 Internat… read more

Similar categories in Benjamín Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • science
  • history
  • philosophy
  • nonfiction
  • audiobook
"Como la luna en el budismo, una partícula no existe; el acto de medición la vuelve un objeto real"

-Benjamín Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World

"Reality, they said to those present, does not exist as something separate from the act of observation."

-Benjamín Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World

"Una de las cosas que siempre me han sorprendido de Chile es la aversión que sentimos por la cordillera. No habitamos las montañas."

-Benjamín Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World

"Solo una visione di insieme, come quella di un santo, di un pazzo o di un mistico, ci permetterà di decifrare la forma in cui è organizzato l’universo."

-Benjamín Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World

Cover of Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

7. Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World

By: Naomi Klein

4.22

Format: 416 pages, Hardcover

What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self―a double who was almost you a… read more

Similar categories in Naomi Klein's Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • history
  • politics
  • philosophy
  • nonfiction
  • sociology
  • audiobook
"Our role here on earth is not simply to maximize the advantage in our lives. It’s to maximize (protect, regenerate) all of life. We are here not just to make sure we as individuals survive, but to ma…"

-Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World

"A state of shock is what happens to us- individually or as a society- when we experience a sudden and unprecedented event for which we do not yet have adequate explanation. At its essence, a shock is…"

-Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World

Cover of The Maniac by Benjamín Labatut

8. The Maniac

By: Benjamín Labatut

4.34

Format: 368 pages, Hardcover

From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hu… read more

Similar categories in Benjamín Labatut's The Maniac book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • philosophy
  • audiobook
"[...] si nuestra especie iba a sobrevivir el siglo XX, necesitábamos llenar el enorme vacío dejado por la huida de los dioses, y la única candidata viable para realizar esa extraña y esotérica transf…"

-Benjamín Labatut, The Maniac

Cover of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber

9. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

By: David Graeber

4.20

Format: 692 pages, Hardcover

A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions abo… read more

Similar categories in David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • audiobook
  • science
  • history
  • politics
  • philosophy
  • economics
  • nonfiction
  • archaeology
  • sociology
  • anthropology
"Humans - from this other perspective, which is just as extreme in its own way - are at best an arbitrary constellation of cultural elements, perhaps assembled according to some prevailing spirit, cod…"

-David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

"One might ask, how could that most basic element of all human freedoms, the freedom to make promises and commitments and thus build relationships, be turned into its very opposite: into peonage, serf…"

-David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

"There is an obvious objection to evolutionary models which assume that our strongest social ties are based on close biological kinship: many humans just don’t like their families very much. And this …"

-David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

"In the Middle Ages, most people in other parts of the world who actually knew anything about northern Europe at all considered it an obscure and uninviting backwater full of religious fanatics who, a…"

-David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Cover of An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong

10. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

By: Ed Yong

4.47

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

A grand tour through the hidden realms of animal senses that will transform the way you perceive th… read more

Similar categories in Ed Yong's An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • audiobook
  • nonfiction
  • science
"It's ironic that we associate taste with connoisseurship, subtlety, and fine discrimination when it is among the coarsest of senses."

-Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

"We are closer than ever to understanding what it is like to be another animal, but we have made it harder than ever for other animals to be."

-Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

"Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal can only tap into a small fraction of realities fullness. Each is enclos…"

-Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

"A striking pattern emerged on days with the most intense solar storms, grey whales were 4 times more likely to beach themselves. This correlation doesn't prove that whales have a compass but it stron…"

-Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

Cover of The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World by Vincent Bevins

11. The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

By: Vincent Bevins

4.61

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

The hidden story of the wanton slaughter -- in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world -- ba… read more

Similar categories in Vincent Bevins's The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • politics
  • history
  • nonfiction
  • audiobook
"locals came to him, time and time again, and asked, with genuine mystification: 'We just don't understand America. You were once a colony. You know what colonialism is. You fought and bled and died f…"

-Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

Cover of The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

12. The Ministry for the Future

By: Kim Stanley Robinson

3.88

Format: 563 pages, Hardcover

Established in 2025, the purpose of the new organization was simple: To advocate for the world's fu… read more

Similar categories in Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • politics
  • audiobook
"What's the monetary value of human civilization? Trying to answer that question proves you are a moral and practical idiot."

-Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future

"Of course there is always resistance, always a drag on movement toward better things. The dead hand of the past clutches us by way of living people who are too frightened to accept change."

-Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future

"It was so hard to imagine that a mind could be gone. All those thoughts that you never tell anyone, all those dreams, all that entire pocket universe: gone. A character unlike any other character, a …"

-Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future

"Ideology, n. An imaginary relationship to a real situation. In common usage, what the other person has, especially when systematically distorting the facts. But it seems to us that an ideology is a n…"

-Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future

Cover of Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis

13. Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

By: Yanis Varoufakis

4.01

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

The #1 bestselling economist shows how capitalism has been replaced by a more exploitative system, … read more

Similar categories in Yanis Varoufakis's Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • history
  • politics
  • philosophy
  • nonfiction
  • economics
  • sociology
  • audiobook
"Il profitto è vulnerabile alla competizione di mercato, mentre la rendita non lo è."

-Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

"Se non è un mercato capitalista, in cosa entriamo, buon Dio, quando andiamo su amazon.com ?"

-Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

"Oltre ad avvertirci che ogni nuova epoca forgiata da qualche tecnologia rivoluzionaria produce una generazione che “mai passerà un giorno immune da fatica e dolore, struggendosi anche di notte"

-Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

"La rivoluzione digitale potrebbe consistere nel trasformare i lavoratori salariati in proletari del cloud, che vivono una vita sempre più precaria e stressante sotto il controllo invisibile di capi a…"

-Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

Cover of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi

14. The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017

By: Rashid Khalidi

4.50

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US … read more

Similar categories in Rashid Khalidi's The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017 book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • politics
  • history
  • nonfiction
  • audiobook
Cover of Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America by Pekka Hämäläinen

15. Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America

By: Pekka Hämäläinen

4.05

Format: 592 pages, Hardcover

There is an old, deeply rooted story about America that goes like this: Columbus “discovers” a stra… read more

Similar categories in Pekka Hämäläinen's Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • nonfiction
  • history
  • audiobook
Cover of Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel

16. Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

By: Jason Hickel

4.51

Format: 336 pages, Paperback

The world has finally awoken to the reality of climate breakdown and ecological collapse. Now we mu… read more

Similar categories in Jason Hickel's Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • history
  • politics
  • philosophy
  • nonfiction
  • economics
  • science
"Individuality is an illusion. Life on this planet is an interwoven mesh of relational becoming."

-Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

"We will find ourselves plunging into ecological collapse well before we run into the limits to growth."

-Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

"It is politically easier to rev up GDP and hope some of it trickles down to the poor than it is to distribute existing income more fairly."

-Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

"Atmospheric carbon concentration should not breach 350ppm if the climate is to remain stable (we crossed that boundary in 1990, and hit 415ppm in 2020)."

-Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

Cover of The Earth Transformed: An Untold History by Peter Frankopan

17. The Earth Transformed: An Untold History

By: Peter Frankopan

3.94

Format: 736 pages, Hardcover

A revolutionary new history that reveals how climate change has dramatically shaped the development… read more

Similar categories in Peter Frankopan's The Earth Transformed: An Untold History book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • politics
  • history
  • nonfiction
  • science
Cover of Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kōhei Saitō

18. Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto

By: Kōhei Saitō

3.91

Format: 273 pages, Kindle Edition

"[A] well-reasoned and eye-opening treatise . . . [Kohei Saito makes] a provocative and visionary p… read more

Similar categories in Kōhei Saitō's Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • politics
  • philosophy
  • nonfiction
  • economics
  • audiobook
Cover of Owning the Future: Power and Property in an Age of Crisis by Adrienne Buller

19. Owning the Future: Power and Property in an Age of Crisis

By: Adrienne Buller

3.52

Format: 225 pages, Kindle Edition

A radical manifesto for the transformation of post-pandemic politicsThe question of ownership is th… read more

Similar categories in Adrienne Buller's Owning the Future: Power and Property in an Age of Crisis book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • politics
  • economics
  • nonfiction
Cover of The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere by Paulette F.C. Steeves

20. The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere

By: Paulette F.C. Steeves

4.07

Format: 326 pages, Hardcover

2022 Choice Outstanding Academic Title The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere is a r… read more

Similar categories in Paulette F.C. Steeves's The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere book and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

  • science
  • history
  • nonfiction
  • archaeology
  • anthropology

14 best-selling audiobook books like The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber

Transform Your Habits

Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

Michael Parenti

4.41

Transform Your Habits

If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution

Vincent Bevins

4.28

Transform Your Habits

Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

Robert M. Sapolsky

4.25

Transform Your Habits

When We Cease to Understand the World

Benjamín Labatut

4.14

View all the books

11 best-selling audiobook books like If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution by Vincent Bevins

Transform Your Habits

Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

Michael Parenti

4.41

Transform Your Habits

If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution

Vincent Bevins

4.28

Transform Your Habits

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World

Naomi Klein

4.22

Transform Your Habits

The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination

Stuart A. Reid

4.40

View all the books

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