DEMOCRACY SCHOOL READING LIST

[January 2006]

“There are no good last chapters...these must be written by We the People.” 

- R. Grossman

I. CORPORATIONS

                                       newish works which challenge old histories

1. James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900-1918, Boston: Beacon Press (1968)

2. Martin J. Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916, The Market, The Law and Politics, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988

3. Scott Bowman, The Modern Corporation And American Political Thought: Law, Power & Ideology, University Park, PA: Penn State Press (1996)

                                                a sampling of older, “classic” works

4. J. G. Blandi, Maryland Business Corporations: 1783-1852, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press (1934)

5. M. E. Dodd, American Business Corporations Until 1860. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1934)

6. Louis Hartz, American Policy and Democratic Thought, Pennsylvania, 1776-1860, Harvard University Press (1947)

7. Adolf Berle & Gardiner Means, The Modern Corporation & Private Property, NY: Macmillan Co. (1933)

8. Thomas C. Cochran & William Miller, The Age of Enterprise: A Social History of Industrial America, NY: Harper & Row (1942)

II. PEOPLE’S STRUGGLES

9. Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, NY: Penguin Books (1972)

10. Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the New Atlantic, Boston: Beacon Press (2000)

11. Elisha P. Douglas, Rebels and Democrats: The Struggle for Equal Political Rights and Majority Rule During the American Revolution, Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks (1955)

12. Henry Demarest Lloyd, Wealth Against Commonwealth, NY: Harper & Bros. (1894)

13. Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt, NY: Oxford University Press (1978)

14. Norman Pollack, The Populist Response to Industrial America: Midwestern Populist Thought, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1962)

15. W. E. B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880, NY: The Free Press (orig. 1935)

16. Eric Foner, Reconstruction 1863-1877, NY: Harper & Row (1988)

17. Daniel T. Rodgers, Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence, NY: Basic Books (1987)

18. David Montgomery, Citizen Worker: The Experiences of Workers in the United States with Democracy and the Free Market during the Nineteenth Century, NY: Cambridge University Press (1993)

19. American Social History Project, Who Built America? Working People & the Nation’s Economy, Politics, Culture & Society, volumes 1 & 2, NY: Pantheon Books, (1989)

20. Agar & Tate, eds., Who Owns America? Wilmington: ISI Books (1999, orig. 1936)

III. THE CONSTITUTION & LAW

21. Jackson Turner Main, The Anti-Federalists: Critics of the Constitution, NY: W. W. Norton (1961)

22. Mary Frances Berry, Black Resistance, White Law: A History of Constitutional Racism in America, NY: Penguin Books, 1971

23. David M. Rabban, Free Speech In Its Forgotten Years, NY: Cambridge University Press (1997)

24. Howard J. Graham, Everyman’s Constitution: Historical Essays on the 14th Amendment, the ‘Conspiracy Theory,’ & American Constitutionalism, Madison: State Historical Society (1968)

25. Morris R. Cohen, Law & the Social Order, NY: Harcourt Brace & Co. (1933)

IV. WORTHY ATTEMPTS AT CROSS-ISSUE SYNTHESES

26. Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, Chapel Hill: University of NC (1944)

27. Vernon Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought: An Interpretation of American Literature from the Beginnings to 1920, in two volumes, NY: Harcourt, Brace & Company (1927)

28. Walter LaFeber, editor, The Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, NY: John Wiley & Sons (1971)

29. K. William Kapp, The Social Costs of Private Enterprise, NY: Schocken (1950)

30. Barry Commoner, Making Peace With the Planet, NY: Pantheon Books (1975-1990)

31. Richard Kazis & Richard Grossman: Fear At Work: Job Blackmail, Labor & the Environment, Philadelphia: New Society Publishers (1991)

32. Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books (1988)

33. Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, NY: Cambridge University Press (1977)

34. C. Vann Woodward, Reunion & Reaction, The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction, Boston: Little Brown & Co. (1951)

35. Maurice Zeitlin, Editor, American Society, Inc.: Studies of the Social Structure and Political Economy of the United States,” Chicago: Markham Publishing Co. (1970)

36. William Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History, Chicago: Quadrangle Books (1966)

37. Herbert Aptheker, History & Reality, New York: Cameron Associates, Inc., (1955)