Join Haymarket Books for the Socialism Conference, July 3 - 6 in Chicago, and participate in four days of socialist politics, ideas, and community. You'll also be able to browse the conference's radical pop-up bookstore, which will feature thousands of indispensable and inspiring books, including many Haymarket titles!

We've put together a reading list of books written by some of the many thinkers, writers, and activists who will be speaking at Socialism 2025!

Check out the full conference schedule and register today!

“Every line of Boots Riley’s work brims with the grit of the underdog, burns with rage, wit, and tenderness. It’s no secret he is one of the most influential poets and thinkers of this generation.”——Jeff Chang

Hear from Boots Riley at: Art and Communism.

From the author of Abolish the Family, an unflinching tour of two hundred years of enemy feminisms, making the case for the bold, liberatory feminist politics we need instead.

Hear from Sophie Lewis at: Gender and the Rising Right, Gender, Sexuality, Reproduction and the State: Fighting Back Against the So-Called Law, and Enemy Feminisms: Reckoning with TERFs, Policewomen, and Zionist Feminists.

What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe.

Hear from Kelly Hayes at: Rethinking Antifascism and Revolutionary Accompaniment: Holding Each Other When Things Fall Apart. Discuss Chapter 6 of Let This Radicalize You with Books Against Borders at a collective study session.

As international awareness of the apartheid nature of Israel grows, Omar Barghouti offers a manifesto for winning Palestinian civil rights.

Hear from Omar Barghouti at: BDS: Building People Power for Palestinian Liberation.

A love letter to Palestinian ancestors, their descendants, and their land, to all anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles, to a history that will never be forgotten, and to a future in which there thrives a free, free Palestine.

Hear from editors and contributors at: Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry.

Drawing from over twenty years of activism on local and national levels, this striking book offers an organizer’s perspective on the intersections of immigrant rights, racial justice, and prison abolition.

Hear from Silky Shah at: The Border is Everywhere; The Border is the Crisis, What’s at Stake: Organizing for Climate Armageddon, and All Our Movements in This Together.

A vital anthology exploring the intersections between caregiving and abolition.

Hear from the editors at: Caregiving Toward Abolition: Workshop and Story Circles.

A collection of essays from the Stop Cop City movement on the fight for police abolition and for a liveable planet for all, with gripping reporting from activists on the ground and rousing articles from renowned radical academics.

Hear from co-editor Mariah Parker at: All Our Movements in This Together

Hear from co-editor Kamau Franklin at: Build & Fight: A Strategy to Meet the Moment

Hear from co-editor Micah Herskind at: Fighting Carceral Infrastructure to End Mass Incarceration

And hear from all three at: Stop Cop City: Lessons from the Movement

Part photo book, part memoir, part oral history project, this volume paints a vivid portrait of queer and trans experiences in rural areas and small towns across the US.

Hear from Rae Garringer at: Country Queers: A Conversation about Community Care and Memory Work in End Times, Gender and the Rising Right, and "The Same Old Tools Won't Work Here": The Role of Rural Organizing in Defeating Authoritarianism.

An intimate, inspiring memoir by educator and labor union leader Karen Lewis, a formidable fighter, a staunch defender of teachers and students, and a beloved Chicagoan.

Hear from Elizabeth Todd-Breland at: I Didn't Come Here to Lie: The Life and Legacy of Karen Lewis.

Written for anyone fed up with the permanent housing crisis, complicit politicians, and real estate greed, Abolish Rent dissects our housing system from the perspective of those it immiserates.

Hear from Tracy Rosenthal at: The Proletariat Has No Homeland: Property and the Surplus Class and Free the Presses.

FORTHCOMING: Pre-order here. A deeply reported analysis of the connections between policing and capitalism, centering global lessons of revolt and resistance.

Hear from brian bean at: We Keep Us Safe: De-escalation Training and Their End is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition.

In the face of relentless attacks on antiracist education, a much-needed reckoning with the roots of this latest wave of censorship and an urgent call to action to defend education.

Hear from Jesse Hagopian at: Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education and The Blunt-Force Assault on Education: Resistance to Fascism.

For too long, representations of climate action in the mainstream media have been white-washed, green-washed and diluted to be made compatible with capitalism. In It’s Not That Radical, Loach addresses head-on the issues at the root of the climate crisis.

Hear from Mikaela Loach at: Climate Action to Transform Our World and All Our Movements in This Together.

A beautifully-written, broadly accessible, and forthright argument for a solution to the migration crisis: open the gates.

Hear from John Washington at: The Border is Everywhere; The Border is the Crisis.

A landmark abolitionist primer on migration, sex work, policing, and the “anti-trafficking industry”—and a powerful argument about who is really leading the way toward justice: migrant sex workers themselves.

Hear from the authors at: Migrant Sex Workers Against Fascism: Lessons from 150 Years of Resistance.

In this genre-bending memoir, Leigh Claire La Berge reflects on her stint at one of the most prestigious management consulting firms in the country and what it teaches us about the absurdity of work.

Hear from Leigh Claire La Berge at: Fake Work: What a Fake Job Dedicated to Solving a Fake Crisis Can Teach Us about Financialized Capitalism.

In these hard-hitting and deeply personal essays, Nation writer and veteran activist Wen Stephenson traces his search for resolve in the face of our converging climate and political catastrophes.

Hear from Wen Stephenson at: Beyond Climate Despair: Rebuilding a Revolutionary Left in the Face of Catastrophe.

“Eve Ewing is a poet of limitless possibility. She seems to get sharper and more daring with each book.” —Poetry Magazine

Hear from Eve L. Ewing at: Original Sins: The (Mis)Education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism.

A meditation on freedom making in the academy for women scholars of color.

Hear from Lorgia García Peña at: Community as Rebellion: Building Networks of Resistance Inside and Outside the University.

A vital history of organizing within and beyond the walls of women’s prisons in the 1970s, illuminating a crucial chapter in today’s abolition feminist struggles.

Hear from Emily Thuma at: "Our Goal is to Dismantle the Whole Violent System": Abolition Feminist Organizing in the 1970s.

A damning account of the latest transformation in mass incarceration, revealing how powerful nonprofits and so-called progressives used the language of social movements to build new jails.

Hear from both authors at Skyscraper Jails: The Abolitionist Fight Against Jail Expansion in New York City, and from Zhandarka Kurti at No New Cages: Lessons from Organizers Resisting Carceral Infrastructure.

This timely and urgent book shows how a youth-led political movement has emerged in recent years to challenge the bipartisan consensus on punishment and looks to the future through a redistributive, queer, and feminist lens. 

Hear from Donna Murch at: The Struggle for Collective Liberation: Class, Oppression, and the Politics of Resistance.

As isolated individuals, debtors have little influence. But as a bloc, we can leverage our debts and devise new tactics to challenge the corporate creditor class and help win reparative, universal public goods.

Hear from the Debt Collective at: You Are Not a Loan: Debtors' Assembly and Debt is a Labor Issue: Unions and Debt Abolition.

In this groundbreaking study, David McNally reveals the true story of money’s origins and development as one of violence and human bondage.

Hear from David McNally at: Hope at the Edge of the Abyss: The Case for Revolution and The State of the State.

Check out the full conference schedule and register today!