HOUDINI Magazine's Weeks as Decades Reading List

When it's socialism or barbarism and you already live in the barbarism.

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Theory & Revolutionary Thought (Fuel for the fire)

• Erik Houdini - 8 Points of Houdinism — the lock picker's ethoes, essential reading
• Nechayev - Catechism of a Revolutionary — ruthless, icy blueprint for dedication
• Weather Underground - Prairie Fire — ideological napalm from a bygone underground
• Lenin - What Is to Be Done? — strategy bible for real-world revolution moves
• George Jackson - Blood in My Eye — the most important book in this list, essential reading
• Malcolm X - By Any Means Necessary — power, pure and undiluted
• Bobby Seale - Seize The Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party — how the panthers did it, essential reading
• comité invisible - The Coming Insurrection — poetic revolution planning manual
• Michael Parenti - Black Shirts & Reds: Rational Fascism & the Overthrow of Communism essential reading
• Thomas Sankara - The revolution cannot triumph without the emancipation of women — radical feminism meets anti-imperialism, essential reading
• Fred Hampton - Power Anywhere There's People — short, sharp truth from a murdered visionary, essential reading
• Red Army Faction - Urban Guerilla Concept — wild west German cell warfare theory
• Lenin - State and Revolution — the state must be smashed, essential reading
• Huey P. Newton - The Correct Handling of Revolution — A revolutionary must realize that if he is sincere, death is imminent, essential reading
• Vincent Bevins - The Jakarata Method — understanding the states ability to mass murder those it opposes, essential reading
• Sprout Distro - Direct Action Survival Guide — the ins and outs on doing direct action
• Insurrectionary Anarchy; Organizing for Attack — raw anarchist gospel, less philosophy more firebomb
• Joe Slovo - 10 Years of uMkhonto weSizwe — the realities of armed struggle
• Frantz Fanon - The Wretched Of The Earth — Fanon's blackpill on Colonial War

Guerrilla Warfare & Direct Action Strategy (How to throw the punch)

• Mao Tse Tung - On Guerilla Warfare — foundation text for asymmetrical warfare
• Che Guevara - On Guerilla Warfare — straight from the man with the beret
• Lenin - On Guerilla Warfare — Bolshevik angle on small group combat
• General Giap - People’s War, People’s Army — Vietnam’s rebel mastermind laying it out
• Armed Insurrection and our Tactics - JV Stalin — gutter era Stalin on arming the masses
• Robert Taber - The War of the Flea — the definitive flea vs. dog lesson, essential reading
• IRA - The Green Book Vol. I & II — the IRA's field handbook keeps it as real as it comes essential reading
• Carlos Marighella - Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla — short, indepth guide for urban combat
• Vincente Solis - Mini Manual of the Clandestine Cell — how to really lock down your block
• Food Not Bombs - Operator's Manual — indepth guide on starting a food not bombs chapter, essential reading
• Clausewitz - On War — old-world war philosophy that was required reading for the Red Army
• Various - Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkey Wrenching — can't cut down spiked trees
• US Army - FM 3-24 Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies — how the imperialist responds to the guerilla
• SACP - How to Master Secret Work — double life instructions, opsec guide
• Joe Burns - No More Fake Strikes — calling out performative activism
• Tabitha de Bruin - Kanesatake Resistance (Oka Crisis) — a tale of guerilla resistance from First Nations people
• Labor Notes- Secrets of a Successful Organizer — labor is entitled to all it creates
• SOCOM - FM 3-05.130 Unconventional Warfare — spec op intel on neo-warfare
• IWW - Workers' Organizing Guide — labor is entitled to all it creates
• 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action — the *other* form of sabotage
• John West - Fry The Brain — the art of urban snipin
• William E. Trautmann - Direct Action and Sabotage — there's a reason the black cat stands for sabatoge
• Luxemburg Collective - Direct Action Handbook — clean, well-written how-to rebel guide
• Anonymous - Basic Blockading — start here if you’re new to blockades
• Anonymous - Blockade, Occupy, Strike Back — taking escalation to the next rung, essential reading
• Dermot Sreenan - The 1931 Barcelona Rent Strike — historic example of collective leverage
• Crimethinc. - Direct Action Guide — punk anarcho action manual
• Crimethinc. - Riot Munitions Guide — survival manual for when the gas canisters start flying

Security, Survival & Tactical Knowledge (Keep yourself and your people alive)

• Critical Resistance - Surviving Solitary Confinement — mental armor for prison hell
• Practical Security for Campus Activists — how not to get burned
• Claire Wolfe - RATS! Protecting Yourself From Snitches — essential manual
• Leave No Trace - Common Sense Guide to Forensics — digital/physical anti-forensics
• How to Defend Yourself During Police Interrogation — learn before you talk, essential reading
• RANT Collective - Organizing in Prison — for when the walls close in
• Anonymous - De-Arrest Primer — rescues from the lion's jaw
• TM 31-210 - US Army Improvised Munitions Handbook — ugly, dangerous, extremely practical
• How to Shoot Down A Drone — drone warfare is the present, not the future
• Crimethinc - 8 Ways to Stop ICE — injury to one is an injury to all
• How To Paint With a Fire Extinguisher — spray and pray, tag your local recruiter's office
• Do No Harm Coalition - Street Medic Training — save your comrades when the rubber bullets hit
• Maxwell Houdini - Blood Should Stay in the Body: Tourniquet Tips — simple, life-saving zine
• Art of Manliness - DIY First Aid Kit — the war needs medics too

Mind Games, Power & Manipulation (Reading the board)

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

― Bruce Lee

• Miyamoto Musashi - Book of Five Rings — timeless warrior headspace, essential reading
• Dolores LaPicho - Chaos Marxism Primer — the magick behind dialetical thinking, essential reading
• 48 Laws of Power - Rundown — dirty moves manual for modern life
• 12 Rules for Radicals — simple wisdom for subversion that sticks
• Antonio Gramsci - The Modern Prince & Other Writings — the shooter's socialist writes truth about power
• Sun Tzu - The Art of War — of course this is on the list, essential reading
• The Thirty Six Stratagems — Ancient Chinese War Wisdom
• Angela Davis — Women, Race & Class— the essential intersectional breakdown
• Citizens Handbook - Organizing Rules — the meta-rules that govern real movement-making
• Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisphysus — learning to love to boulder
• Marcus Aurelius - Meditations — making your mind strong to handle the worst of it
• Frederick Engels - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific — the crash course on materialism
• Mao Tse Tung - Quotations — the infamous little red book, essential reading
• Peter Kropotkin - The Conquest of Bread — the roots of mutual aid