Recs if you like The Gulag Archipelago...

This list highlights the influential books that have been banned, censored, or widely discouraged at various times and places due to their provocative ideas, controversial content, or challenges to authority. These stories preserve critical thinking, protect intellectual freedom, and remind us why questioning dominant narratives is essential now more than ever.

books about the second world war that investigate race, class, and gender and/or the human cost of the war. these aren’t the pop history books you buy your dad for christmas, i promise.

primarily (but not exclusively) academic history books read during my history MA program! consequently some may be a bit dense and/or dry.

For when you want to live inside the brain wrinkle that Anna Maria Volkova folded for you while you read her novel, Games.

Tier 4 of the Disturbing Novel iceberg, inspired by the disturbing movie iceberg.

This Tier contains significant gore, taboo topics, and is not for the faint of heart.

A list of books to help you assimilate different perpectives - in politics, sociology, race studies, humanities, real history, psychology.

Books you might need in order to become "disgustingly educated" on various topics that concern all of us.

As always, anything must be taken with a grain of salt, even when it's a perspective we agree with ⚠️

Never forget 😸

a collection of fiction and nonfiction texts on gender, race, culture, history, politics that feel like absolute must reads

Books that explore the history of the USSR, its origins, its triumphs, the people it oppressed, and its collapse. (Includes fiction books based on real-life Soviet experiences)

While non-fiction can be difficult to get into, I am forever on the hunt for stories that are easy to sink my teeth into. This curation has POVs from many different countries and walks of life. Stay tuned cause I'm always adding more!

Get your brain juices flowing.

Biographies and memoirs that will shock you.