For history, I'm a big fan of Eric Hobsbawm —
The Age of Revolution: 1789–1848 The Age of Capital: 1848–1875 The Age of Empire: 1875–1914 The Age of Extremes: 1914–1991
Also, for a more America specific perspective, Mike Davis' Prisoners of the American Dream is fantastic.
Check out Ovid.tv, it's a kinda new streaming service put together by several independent film distributors that has a bunch of radical/left-wing documentaries, esp. from Latin America and Africa.