My dad was a dyed-in-the-wool leftist as a young man but is now a pretty tepid progressive (voted for Bernie, donates to Dems) who fully believes capitalism is the best system and it just needs some tweaks. His changes in beliefs also corresponded to a change in class—shocking, I know.
He's always recommending me books which I usually don't read because they're not my cup of tea, but I figured this would be a great opportunity to do one of these book swaps I've heard tell of ("I'll read this if you read that"). Problem is, I am a dummy who mostly just listens to podcasts, so I need some help picking a book for me to read first and then have him read. My first thought Anand Giridharadas' Winners Take All (one of the few relevant books I have read) since it squarely takes aim at the idea that the wealthy/corporations can be a force for good while shoring up existing structures (my dad's a big-time Bill Gates believer), but I wonder if there's something even better out there that takes a more systemic approach. That being said, I think one of the strengths of that book for is that it doesn't assume (all) of the philanthropy is purely cynical and instead focuses on the allure of philanthropy and why it doesn't work, which is a lot more palatable for a lib who also believes in those things and doesn't want to feel like a sucker.
Besides the inability of philanthropy/"conscious" capitalism to address the problems of the world, I think urbanism and imperialism (in particular US imperialism) are also topics he might be receptive on. With the former he's bought into tech-will-save-us copium without questioning it much and with the latter I think he's a combination of in denial and just genuinely uninformed, so I think he can be moved on them. I read most of Shock Doctrine but I honestly didn't find it very convincing; I didn't really need to be convinced, but I didn't get the impression it would convince many fence-sitters of its central thesis. I'm sure there are plenty of other great books which give an overview of imperialist crimes and their motivations, though.
TL;DR: looking for accessible (audio)books for an older lapsed leftist to read. Promising topics include the failure of philanthropy and social enterprise, urbanism, and US imperialism, but I'm open to others
EDIT (9/20): Just want to say I appreciate everyone's thoughtful recommendations! I'm listening to The Jakarta Method right now (excellent stuff) and will work my way through your other suggestions soon. If I remember, I'll post an update about how things went!
To add, I don't believe Bevins himself is a socialist or even openly left-leaning per se. I assume he likely leans left but I seem to recall Bevins keeps his cards close to the vest about his own personal ideologies, both in the book and subsequent interviews. Might help encourage dad to read it if Bevins is ostensibly an "independent" source.
Proud of this community for recommending The Jakarta Method and Blackshirts and Reds right off the bat those are the two that will probably help in the most situations.
The only other thing I'd think about is the unfortunate need to kill his faith in a world that improves under capitalism. That falsehood has to be both torn down and displaced by a socialist analysis. I don't know if there's a single book that really gets into all of the facets that are salient, or at least the talking points I think are convincing:
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Infinite growth vs. climate change and a finite planet.
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The nature and necessity of imperialism under capitalism.
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The tendency of the rate of profit to fall and for the business cycle to create crises that are always resolved with the blood of workers.
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The good things shown in world statistics over the last 50 years are nearly always just China kicking ass. Remove China from the picture or adjust the stats just slightly and the world is actually getting worse.
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The normalized violence under capitalism. I always point to Amartya Sen's analysis of excess mortality in capitalist India, which absolutely dwarfs the most ridiculous anticommunist death counts. Nobody in the West talks about the deaths from capitalist deprivation, from capitalist malnourishment, from capitalist preventable disability, from a capitalist lack of basic sanitation and medicine. They pretend it's all just a natural phenomenon, but it's actually a deliberate choice in how to run the economy in favor of the owner class.
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That capitalism in crisis acts fashy, that liberals are creating the conditions for fashy people to take over.
Anyways I'm just ranting at this point. Maybe Jason Hickel would be good. His work on degrowth states what is necessary to mitigate and survive climate change and that capitalism is wholly incompatible with what is necessary.
Or if your dad likes reading more hardcore lefties maybe Vijay Prashad, who writes well on imperialism.
Or if your dad likes soft economic texts then Superimperialism, which marries a polemic against finance capitalism with a pretty good analysis of the financial violence used by the United States against the workers of other countries.
Or maybe do a slow burn by listening to Citations Needed so that your dad starts to recognize bad faith tropes and the feel-good bullshit that surrounds us.
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Seasons 2 and 3 of Blowback
October by China Mieville, followed by The State and Revolution by Lenin
If your dad was a leftist, blackshirts might be too polemical and introductory.
People's republic of Walmart shows that capitalism has been forced to use planning and that in actuality no free market does or can exist in a modern economy.
Capital in the 21st Century pretty conclusively shows that capitalism only made lives better because the Soviets forced them to and the old trends Marx described are back.
Washington Bullets by Vijay Prashad is a good one for imperialism. Just hours of examples of terrible things the US has done. It also came out recently so its up to date
Is that the one where he spells out how the US couped Arbenz using the CIA as his lone source? That fucking owns
There's several times in the book where he mentions how the CIA/State Dept. have straight up admitted to these things he's describing. He wrote it in the hope that libs would read it and be convinced by it too
