My little cousin is a pretty good kid who really loves history and is broadly familiar with US imperialism. He starts university this fall and is majoring in Mathematics and Economics -which is a cesspool of capitalist indoctrination. Are there any books that you'd recommend to send him that would push him to think more critically of the neoliberal indoctrination that he is likely to receive? I could obviously just give him Marx or Lenin but I was looking for something a little more subtle.
When I was that age A People's History by Howard Zinn had a big influence on me. The part that really stuck though was the Vietnam war stuff, so a book about the actual history of those things might be better.
Also recently read The Politics of Heroin by Alfred McCoy, which isn't very political but it's about drugs, spies, and war, which seems like it would be good for a 17 year old.
What about left philosophers who aren't as infamous as Marx, like Fannon or Foucault?