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Fifteen Colonial Thefts: A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums, edited by Sela K. Adjei and Yann LeGall (buy here)

This is a great gift for anyone who likes to visit museums when travelling or at home. It lays out fifteen significant looted items, with each giving an insight into an aspect of colonial theft. Ideal for people who like to read catalogues, this one is open about it being a catalogue of crimes. Also a possible ‘stretch’ gift for the Antiques Roadshow crowd.

Settler Colonialism: An Introduction, by Sai Englert (buy here)

I’m biased, I know, but this excellent introduction should be read by everyone serious about understanding the nature of imperialist violence in our time. The anti-imperialism of the twenty-first century must dismantle and address the violence of settler-colonialism – reading this will help you think about what we might do next.

Radical Intimacy by Sophie K Rosa (buy here)

Of course, for intimate friends and crushes of the moment, Radical Intimacy is a readable, thoughtful but still open to suggestion kind of a present. You could at least have a coffee date to talk about what it says.

But for serious romantic obsession, I would go with:

33 Lessons on Capital: Reading Marx Politically, by Harry Cleaver (buy here)

Follow up on each of the 33 lessons – a date, a call, a voice note. By the end you will either be planning your shared future or starting a revolutionary cell. Or both.

— Chosen by Gargi Bhattacharyya, co-author of Empire’s Endgame: Racism and the British State, author of Traffick: The Illicit Movement of People and Things, and FireWorks series editor

Transgender Marxism, edited by Jules Joanne Gleeson and Elle O’Rourke (buy here) 

This remarkable collection created a new landscape of inquiry, thinking capitalism and trans life alongside, through, and against each other. I regularly teach its essays, finding them powerful tools for opening up how we think broadly about the politics of gender.

Beyond Cop Cities: Dismantling State and Corporate-Funded Armies and Prisons, edited by Joy James (buy here)

Taking as its starting point the mass direct-action struggle in forests outside Atlanta against the construction of a police training campus known as Cop City, this book helps us understand and challenge the intensifying militarization of police violence. The essays link revolutionary abolitionist struggles against police, prisons, and white supremacy, interwoven in the thinking of Joy James, the volume’s editor.

Eros and Alienation: Capitalism and the Making of Gendered Sexualities by Alan Sears (buy here)

Alan Sears offers a compelling argument on the pervasive alienation of capitalist society that truncates and distorts our capacities for creative expression, love and human flourishing. He maps erotics as a terrain of struggle, both captured by profit and the state, as well as a means of resistance and collective emancipation. Sears shows the vitality and necessity of queer Marxism, deftly synthesized with Black feminism, family abolitionism, social reproduction theory, utopian speculation, and critical theory. This book is a powerful tool towards the reclaiming of ourselves as sexual beings in a revolutionary transformation of society.

— Chosen by M.E. O’Brien, author of Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care

Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health by Micha Frazer-Carroll (buy here)

Micha shows how the way the world is structured contributes to mental distress. But she also provides a vision for how we could move away from carceral state institutions and towards a system of mental health support that is more accessible and community-controlled. At a time when issues around mental ill-health, trauma and distress are right at the forefront of the UK government’s policy agenda – particularly in health and social security – this wonderful and genuinely radical book should be grasped by anyone who wants to enter that debate.

Disability Praxis: The Body as a Site of Struggle by Bob Williams-Findlay (buy here)

Bob calls in his book for the disabled people’s movement to rediscover its appetite for fighting oppression and transforming society. This is a crucial demand in the current climate, where disabled people in the UK are beset on every side by cuts to benefits and services, and the ever-looming threat of institutionalisation. Disabled activists, he says, should combine campaigning for rights with the fight for social change and transforming wider society.

— Chosen by John Pring, author of The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence

They Will Beat the Memory Out of Us: Forcing Nonviolence on Forgetful Movements by Peter Gelderloos (buy here)

Are you ready to take an active part in resistance? Well, there are numerous authoritarian traps, myths and recuperative methods that lead us to the present political situation. Peter Gelderloos guides us through these struggles and traps, meanwhile showing new generations that remembering, and more so connecting with, the past political struggles and their lessons is among the first steps (alongside graffiti) to anti-authoritarian struggle.

Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Colonial Violence and New Landscapes of Resistance by Shourideh C. Molavi (buy here)

Confronted with the horrors of war, the extermination and imprisonment of people, we tend to forget the environment. Whether trees, rivers, animals or built environments (and the toxins they release when they are destroyed), we forget how anti-war movements and colonial struggle are far closer to environmentalism and climate justice than any bike lane, wind turbine or electric vehicle. Environmental Warfare in Gaza reminds us of this horror, but also the way every climate activist must support anti-colonial struggle and end imperial warfare.

— Chosen by Xander Dunlap, author of This System is Killing Us: Land Grabbing, the Green Economy and Ecological Conflict

My Great Arab Melancholy, by Lamia Ziadé, translated by Emma Ramadan (buy here) 

Lamia Ziadé’s visually striking, deeply moving, and unclassifiable meditation on the past, present and future of political life in the Arab world (especially the Levant) could not be more relevant and resonant today. Featuring hundreds of Ziadé’s beautiful and often haunting original full-colour illustrations throughout, the book is as richly researched as it is intimately personal. Elegantly translated by Emma Ramadan, My Great Arab Melancholy will be treasured by anyone who has even a passing interest in ongoing events in Palestine, Lebanon and the wider Middle East, and by readers of hybrid memoir and graphic/illustrated nonfiction.

— Chosen by David Shulman, Senior Commissioning Editor

Kicking Off Around The World: 55 Stories From When Football Met Politics by Ramon Usall, translated by Luke Stobart (buy here) 

Now, I’m not your average football fan…. in fact I’d go to say I’m not a hardcore football fan at all. Ninety minutes is about sixty minutes too long as far as I’m concerned, but I tell you what isn’t too long: the chapters in Kicking Off Around The World: 55 Stories From When Football Met Politics, which run to no more than 5-6 pages each! Perfect for an occasional football fan who likes a good story, a spot of history and occasionally surprising people with a random fact or two.

Each brief chapter dips into a footballing moment in time where ‘the beautiful game’ collides headlong with politics, changing the world along the way. And each story really is from around the world too, putting pay to the idea that football is just played by European teams. Also a great gift for the more dedicated sports fan (yes I have gifted this book to several of my mates… and they were very welcomely received), it has a great cover too and it wouldn’t look out of place on the bookshelf of any football supporter, no matter to whom they pledge their allegiance.

— Chosen by Sophie O’Reirdan, Head of Sales

James Baldwin: Living in Fire by Bill V. Mullen (buy here) 

Bill V. Mullen’s James Baldwin: Living in Fire is one of our bestselling books in North America this year. There’s a reason for that. Baldwin’s reflections on identity, belonging, and the human condition continue to offer profound insights that feel as urgent and necessary now as they did decades ago. His exploration of the psychological effects of oppression and the deep-seated fear that fuels racial prejudice helps readers understand the underlying forces behind social tensions today. Mullen’s homage to Baldwin’s radical queer life and activism is an essential read.

— Chosen by Patrick Hughes, VP, North America