Person
Every book Mia Wong recommended on podcasts
Key facts
- Mia Wong has recommended or discussed 55 books on podcasts, as of October 10, 2026.
- Mia Wong has talked about books on 1 podcast, as of October 10, 2026.
- Those books came up in 49 episodes, as of October 10, 2026.
- The 3 books Mia Wong has mentioned in the most episodes, as of October 10, 2026: Whipping Girl, The Utopia of Rules and Debt.
- The latest episode with a book mention from Mia Wong aired on October 10, 2026.
Updated
Mia Wong’s most recommended books
- Whipping Girl by Julia Serano
- The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber
- Debt by David Graeber
- In Defense of Looting by Vicky Osterweil
- The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx
- The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
- One of the Boys by Victoria Zeller
- Capital by Karl Marx
- Moneyball by Michael Lewis
- The Great Uprising by Peter B. Levy
Mia Wong is a podcast guest who frequently appears on Behind the Bastards to discuss political history, economics, and contemporary media. Across multiple episodes, she has recommended and discussed several notable books to illustrate her points and guide listeners toward further reading. Wong referenced Timothy Mitchell's Carbon Democracy to explain the structural and economic differences between coal and oil economies, encouraging her audience to read it for details on the economics of oil. She also brought up David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years multiple times to emphasize the historical connections linking the financial class and militarism, particularly noting how debt systems forced countries to repay loans incurred by dictators. Additionally, Wong recommended Graeber's Direct Action: An Ethnography as a valuable source on anti-globalization protests and protest tactics, and she referenced his work in The Utopia of Rules when discussing the relationship between power, eloquence, and violence. Furthermore, Wong highlighted David Graeber's anthropological insights and recommended Victoria Zeller's forthcoming novel One of the Boys, detailing its premise about a transgender girl who plays football, while praising the author's writing style and the book's engaging narrative arc.
Books recommended by Mia Wong
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Whipping Girl
Whipping Girl by Julia Serano is a foundational feminist text that examines transmisogyny, the intersection of trans issues and traditional sexism, and the cultural policing of femininity.
Discussed“The one that was most emotionally impactful for me was getting to interview Dr. Julia Serrano, who um if you haven't listened to that episode, go listen to it. Great book. Whipping Girl is the book that literally created a bunch of the like like the concept of misgendering is like from that book, right?”
Where to get it
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The Utopia of Rules
The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber is an anthropological examination of bureaucracy, violence, and the way administrative systems shape modern society.
Discussed“The bureaucratic welfare state, as the anthropologist David Greyber points out in his book, The Utopia of Rules, was perhaps first implemented by archons conservative Otto von Bismar as a very explicit way to buy off the working class.”
Where to get it
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Debt
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber is a sweeping anthropological examination of the history and social functions of debt, credit, and power across human civilizations.
Discussed“So, Molly, this this is the this is the point where I we we need to bring debt the first 5,000 years back into this and emphasize the extent to which the financial class has always been deeply connected to the to the military and why it's always been deeply connected to war financing.”
Where to get it
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In Defense of Looting
In Defense of Looting by Vicky Osterweil is a controversial book that examines property destruction and looting through a radical political lens, arguing that such acts can represent uprisings against oppressive systems.
Discussed“There's this Vicky Ostaw line that I I think about a lot from her book in defensive looting where she talks about how I feel like it was Ferguson that this is about where like the police chief's talking about the damage to the community and they keep saying our Walmart.”
Where to get it
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The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx is a classic political essay analyzing the 1851 coup d'état in France through the lens of historical materialism and class struggle.
Discussed“170 years ago, Markx wrote this in the 18th premier of Louis Bonapart, his own response to a nation's nationalist attempt to restore its former glory by invoking the name of a previous leader. The social revolution of the 19th century cannot take its poetry from the past, but only from the future.”
Where to get it
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The Society of the Spectacle
The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord is a seminal 1967 theoretical work that critiques how modern capitalist production transforms authentic human life into an accumulation of mediated images and performances.
Discussed“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. So wrote the French social theorist Gourd in his seinal 1967 work, The Society of the Spectacle.”
Where to get it
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One of the Boys
One of the Boys by Victoria Zeller is a contemporary young adult sports novel that follows Grace, a high school senior and trans girl who returns to her school's football team after quitting over the summer when she came out.
Recommended“But the actual and more important question it asks is, "What if a poster could write fiction?" And the answer is that it [ __ ] rips. Thank you. Um, this this book rules it.”
Where to get it
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Capital
Capital by Karl Marx is a foundational critique of political economy that examines the mechanics of capitalist production, commodity fetishism, and the systemic exploitation of labor.
Discussed“Like like I I want to say this too that like there there's like a theory version of this in capital where Markx talks about how like labor is the only commodity that you pay for at the end”
Where to get it
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Moneyball
Moneyball by Michael Lewis is a celebrated nonfiction book documenting how the Oakland Athletics baseball team leveraged analytical models and statistical data to gain a competitive edge.
Discussed“He wrote Moneyball, which is the book that we'll be talking about, which I'll get to in a second. And he wrote The Blind Side”
Where to get it
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The Great Uprising
Discussed“I'm going to I'm going to read a quote from a book called The Great Uprising, which is about this sort of period. Between 1963 and 1972, America experienced over 750 urban revolts.”
Where to get it
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Bobby Fischer
Bobby Fischer is a comprehensive biography by Frank Brady that explores the remarkable rise and tragic fall of the legendary chess champion.
Recommended“his biographer Frank Brady who who writes a really good book about probably the best like biography of Bobby Fischer called end game Bobby Fisher's remarkable rise and fall that I'm gonna be using so good”
Where to get it
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Carbon Democracy
Carbon Democracy by Timothy Mitchell is a historical and political economy text that investigates how modern democratic systems have been shaped, constrained, and undermined by the politics of fossil fuels, drawing a sharp contrast between the labor dynamics of coal economies and the centralized capital flows of oil production.
Recommended“A lot of this I'm I'm sourcing from um Timothy Mitchell's book Carbon Democracy, which is very very good.”
Where to get it
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Liquidated
Liquidated by Karen Ho offers an in-depth ethnography and history of Wall Street, examining the culture and practices of investment banking during the shareholder revolution of the 1990s.
Recommended“One of the best accounts of this era is from the anthropologist Karen Hoe in her book Liquidated and Ethnography of Wall Street. The book was a product of the fieldwork she did at a Wall Street investment bank in the9s. And I really cannot emphasize this book enough. This book is incredible. Everyone should read it.”
Where to get it
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Chicago '68
Discussed“I'm going to read a quote from the the very good book Chicago 68 which is a I politically it's a bit questionable but it has an excruciatingly in-depth account of of these I mean we're talking hour to hour rundowns of of the convention itself.”
Where to get it
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In the Shadow of the Moons
Discussed“But in in 1999, Nansuk Hong publishes a book called In the Shadow of the Moons, My Life in the Reverend Sunyong Moon's family.”
Where to get it
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Inventing the Pinkertons; or, Spies, Sleuths, Mercenaries, and Thugs
Discussed“This is from the book Inventing the Pinkertons. Quote, "By the end of June, he had built around the mills a protective 12-oot fence that included rifle holes, water manes capable of blasting strikers with boiling water, and wires attached to a generator which could be electrified."”
Where to get it
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Robert's Rules of Order
Critiqued“One of the things you will be told and if you have been in organizations before a lot of them use a thing called Robert's rules of orders which is this old like incredibly elaborate set of parliamentary procedures. Do not use them.”
Where to get it
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THE TURNER DIARIES
The Turner Diaries by Andrew Macdonald is a notorious anti-Semitic and anti-government apocalyptic novel that depicts a violent white supremacist revolution in the United States.
Discussed“that seems to be it like politicians and like it's it's kind of an evolution of the like purge the deep state thing where he wants Democrats gone from like the army and right right you know so it's the kind of more generic version of like the sort of Nazi fantasy of the day of the rope from the”
Where to get it
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Capital as Power
Capital as Power by Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler is an influential heterodox economic text that reimagines capitalism as a system driven by power rather than purely material production.
Recommended“If you want to know more about this, read their book capitalist power. It's quite good. I am mentioning them because I am about to misuse their argument completely”
Where to get it
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Direct Action
Direct Action by David Graeber is an ethnographic account of the alter-globalization movement, detailing the author's firsthand experiences with and participation in the major anti-globalization protests of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Recommended“I would also recommend uh David Greyber's uh direct action in ethnography which is him writing about the original like anti like alter globalization protests and his like time in them. Yeah. So, you know, if you need direct action ideas, they they did some fun stuff with dressing guys up like marshmallows so police batons would bounce off of”
Where to get it
- Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque by Mark W. Driscoll
- Abundance by Ezra Klein
- Anarchism and the Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Bible by Bible
- Border Economies by James Gerber
- Capital accumulation and income distribution by Donald J. Harris
- Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
- Critique of the Gotha Programme by Karl Marx
- For the Win by Cory Doctorow
- Foundation by Isaac Asimov
- Frames of War by Judith Butler
- Inside the League by Scott Anderson
- Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
- Negroes with Guns by Robert F. Williams
- No Shortcuts by Jane McAlevey
- Paradise Lost by John Milton
- Republican Gomorrah by Max Blumenthal
- Sexed Up by Julia Serano
- Shanghai on Strike by Elizabeth J. Perry
- Sweetness and Power by Sidney W. Mintz
- The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James
- The Blind Side by Michael Lewis
- The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
- The influence of sea power upon history, 1660-1783 by Alfred Thayer Mahan
- The Magical State by Fernando Coronil
- The Moral Economy of the Peasant by James C. Scott
- The Prize by Daniel Yergin
Mia Wong talked about Bible, one of the books trending on podcasts right now.
Mia Wong’s latest episodes with books
Mia Wong’s book recommendations by year
All 55 books Mia Wong recommended or discussed across 49 episodes, filed by the year each episode came out. Each year goes episode by episode, with the minute every book came up.