Secondhand History & Politics Bargain Book Box SP4194

Secondhand History & Politics Bargain Book Box SP4194

Twenty-one Penguin Specials, Pelican Books, and Penguin Classics from the 1960s and early 1970s — a remarkable collection of political and historical writing including two Martin Luther King titles, A.J.P. Taylor’s The Origins of the Second World War, Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Ruth First’s memoir of South African detention, and Cordwainer Smith’s Chronicles of the Crusades. Please note these are secondhand copies in vintage condition and may show wear.

1. Report from a Chinese Village — Jan Myrdal — Myrdal’s 1963 account of life in a Chinese village under Mao, based on extensive interviews with peasants; one of the most important works of political reportage of the twentieth century.
2. Chaos or Community? — Martin Luther King — King’s 1967 call for a radical reorientation of American society beyond civil rights to economic justice; his most explicitly socialist argument and, written months before his death, his most urgent.
3. 117 Days — Ruth First — First’s account of her 117 days in solitary confinement under South Africa’s Ninety-Day Detention Law; a Penguin Special that became an essential document of the anti-apartheid struggle. First was later assassinated by a letter bomb.
4. Stride Toward Freedom — Martin Luther King Jr. — King’s 1958 account of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the principles of nonviolent resistance; his first book and the foundational text of the civil rights movement’s theory and practice.
5. The Six Day War — Randolph S. & Winston S. Churchill — The father-and-son account of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, published within months of the fighting; still one of the most readable accounts of those extraordinary six days.
6. Khhrushchev’s Russia — Edward Crankshaw — Crankshaw’s Penguin Special account of post-Stalin Soviet society, written by the Observer’s long-standing Moscow correspondent; acute, accessible, and still essential for understanding the Khrushchev years.
7. The Making of Modern Russia — Lionel Kochan — A concise history of Russia from the earliest times to the Cold War; one of the most reliable single-volume accounts of Russian history in the Pelican catalogue.
8. South-East Asia in Turmoil — Brian Crozier — A Penguin Special written at the height of the Vietnam War, surveying the political situation across the region; a document of the anxieties that shaped Western policy in Southeast Asia through the 1960s.
9. Chinese Looking Glass — Dennis Bloodworth — A study of Chinese national psychology and culture across 3,000 years of history; Bloodworth was the Observer’s Southeast Asia correspondent and writes with unusual cultural sympathy.
10. Communist China (China Readings 3) — ed. Franz Schurmann & Orville Schell — The third in the China Readings series, gathering primary documents and commentary on the People’s Republic; an essential academic reference of its period.
11. The New States of West Africa — Ken Post — A Penguin African Library account of the newly independent nations of West Africa in the 1960s, surveying their political structures and prospects; a document of post-colonial optimism and its complications.
12. Churchill: A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Vol. 2 — Winston Churchill — The second volume of Churchill’s sweeping history, covering the New World; Churchill’s history writing is itself a historical document, embodying mid-century assumptions about empire and destiny.
13. Chronicles of the Crusades — Joinville & Villehardouin — The Penguin Classics edition of two twelfth and thirteenth-century accounts of the Crusades by participants; extraordinary primary historical testimony about events of enormous consequence.
14. Revolutionary Europe 1783–1815 — George Rudé — The Fontana History of Europe volume covering the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic period; Rudé writes social history with a Marxist precision that makes the period newly legible.
15. Nasser’s Egypt — Peter Mansfield — A Penguin African Library account of Nasser’s Egypt in the 1960s, surveying the political and social transformation of the Arab world’s most important state.
16. Cuba: An American Tragedy — Robert Scheer & Maurice Zeitlin — A Penguin Special analysis of the Cuban Revolution and American policy toward it; written with the urgency of the missile crisis still fresh.
17. Republican China (China Readings 2) — ed. Franz Schurmann & Orville Schell — The second China Readings volume, covering the Republican period before 1949; essential context for understanding the Communist revolution.
18. Mao Tse-Tung — Stuart Schram — The political biography of Mao that became the standard Western account of his rise and ideology; Schram had access to Mao’s early writings unavailable to other scholars.
19. The Origins of the Second World War — A.J.P. Taylor — Taylor’s controversial 1961 masterwork, arguing that Hitler was an opportunist rather than a planner; one of the most argued-about history books of the twentieth century and an essential document in historiographical debate.
20. A History of Latin America — George Pendle — A concise Pelican survey of Latin American history from the pre-Columbian period to the 1960s; Pendle’s overview remains one of the most readable single-volume introductions.
21. The American Challenge — Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber — The 1967 French bestseller arguing that American corporate power was colonising Europe’s economy; one of the defining political books of the late 1960s and a progenitor of anti-globalisation thinking.