By transformative, I mean books that you felt really impacted your approach to the study of history. Like, after having closed the book you felt refreshed and rejuvenated and invigorated.
To start us off, here are some really strong economic/social histories I found deeply edifying:
- American Babylon by Robert Self: history of postwar Oakland. Self poses the problem of the American postwar era as "the overdevelopment of the suburb and the underdevelopment of the city." Specifically, Self investigates how Oakland could produce such diverging political movements such as the California Tax Revolt and the Black Panthers. Self attributes the primary motive to the uneven democratization of housing among white and black workers following World War II. I put this on the list because it has done more in clarifying the central contradictions of the New Deal and the social logic that led to the reconstitution of the Republican Party.
- Nature's Metropolis by William Cronon: This is a truly brilliant history of the mid to late-nineteenth century American Midwest. Despite Cronon being an avowed non-Marxist, he really does write economic history in a way that would make Marx proud. If there's one book you should read straight after reading all three volumes of Capital with the end of solidifying your knowledge of and applying Marx's insights to history, it would be this one.
- Slavery's Capitalism edited by Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman: Excellent compilation of essays released only a few years ago on the ways in which slavery contributed to and was embedded within nineteenth century capitalism. This is a great antidote to the old brainworm that the Southern antebellum economy was somehow anti or pre-capitalist. It's a really great elucidation of Wallerstein and Banaji's distinction between modes of production and modes of exploitation.
- Modern World-Systems Theory vols. I-IV by Immanuel Wallerstein: These books are like if you took that part of the German Ideology where Marx gives a condense history of the fall of Ancient Rome to the rise of Capitalism in Europe and expanded it out into a 900+ page history spanning four books. Wallerstein is brilliant, and the number of sources from which he draws his material will take your breath away. His books stand as a strong lesson for any materialist or Marxist learning how to think "dialectically" about history; in other words, how to think of social and economic developments in relation to other developments. Wallerstein's concept of core-periphery is much maligned by critics, and Wallerstein may be one of the more misunderstood heterodox economists of the late-twentieth century. Whatever you may think of him, I promise you his arguments are far more nuanced than what people may have you think. His dialectic approach to history really brings it all together as well. Wallerstein contextualizes "events" like the American and French and Industrial Revolutions and demonstrates how all three are less events and more the culminations of decades and centuries-long process and historical conjectures. You will be a better Marxist for having read his work.
I'd share some more, but it's late on my end and I'm tired of typing. I'll probably share some more books down the thread as I think of them.
I've heard lots of good things about wallerstein recently I'll definitely be checking him out.
Althusser's work, especially The Philosophy of the Encounter and his essay on ideology have been extremely important to my understanding of history, how modes of production come about and change, what role the state has in this and how it develops evolutionarily.
Alec Nove, who was a liberal economist focused on socialist economies, left an impression on my on how books of economic history should be written with his Economic History of the USSR.
One book which was premised on debates in the 90s between structuralists and post structuralists was The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation that goes in depth of how the political economy of late pre capitalist Europe created the modern education system and laid the foundations for wage labor, and the modern bourgeoisie.
I came across Skidelsky's Money & Government -- which isnt economic history per se -- but it introduced me to Friedrich List's National System of Political Economy which itself led me to become more interested in economic history and development with a fresh eye.
The great transformation by Karl Polanyi slaps
Marshall Sahlins 'Stone Age Economics' for discussing the centrality of the economic in the social from a comparative anthropological perspective
Debt: The First 5000 Years
Graeber was one of the most well-read people i've ever encountered. He wrote clearly, he seemed to always be thinking and in dialog, and his work is phenomenal. "Debt" is his magnum opus (though his and Wengrow's Dawn of Humanity is very good as well).
He's not explicitly materialist and many people shit on him for being idealist but i have the feeling he wouldn't even engage with arguments over labels like that. I think the theory he outlines for debt and money is probably the best one out there full stop.
Shaikh seems to jump on it and conceptions like it in Chapter 14 of his Capitalism, Conflict, and Crises book but it's some of Shaikh's weakest arguments. They're circular in many respects, illogical in others, and aren't nearly as well supported by actual empirical evidence like Garber's work is. Which is unfortunate because Shaikh is incredibly skilled and knowledgeable
Graeber gives an overview of the history of thought around debt and money, as the title promises, for the past 5000 years. And it's not just the typical ancient greece -> rome -> medeival europe -> western society line that many scholars fall into. There's work on pre-roman irish and welsh law codes, ancient chinese and indian philosophical debates on the nature of debt itself, and tons more. Either Graeber spent every waking moment of his life reading or could read 600wpm or both.