There are political upsets, and then there are the kind that spark a genuine cultural reset.
Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 New York City mayoral victory was one of those. A little-known state assembly member at the beginning of the year, Mamdani went on to defeat Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary and then win the mayoralty in November, becoming New York City’s first Muslim mayor, its first mayor born in Africa, its first mayor of South Asian heritage, and its youngest mayor in more than a century. More than two million New Yorkers cast ballots in the general election, the highest turnout in a mayoral race in more than 50 years.
Born in Uganda in 1991, Mamdani moved to New York at the age of seven. The son of filmmaker Mira Nair and post-colonial scholar Mahmood Mamdani, his middle name, Kwame, was chosen in honor of Ghanaian independence leader Kwame Nkrumah. Mamdani attended Bowdoin College in Maine—where he majored in Africana studies and co-founded the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine—and worked as a housing counselor and campaign manager (and occasional socially conscious rapper) before entering electoral politics.
His rise was political, but also unmistakably cultural. Mamdani’s earnest progressive politics, pop-cultural charisma and underdog campaign captured the hearts of New Yorkers who had long felt unseen and unheard by City Hall.
Ahead of his historic win, Mamdani shared a reading list on the public-library platform BiblioCommons that now reads like a blueprint for his vision of New York. It’s a bookshelf preoccupied with the politics of belonging and the machinery of power: who gets to live in a city, who gets to shape it, who benefits from its institutions, and what it takes to change them. As Mamdani puts it, the titles “reflect the world I’m working to win — for housing justice, economic equality, decolonial understanding, and bold change.”
From his father’s analysis of colonial power and political identity to Paulo Freire’s foundational Pedagogy of the Oppressed, explore Zohran Mamdani’s book recommendations below. For further radical reading, check out the bookshelves of Angela Davis, The Black Panther Party, Howard Zinn, Nipsey Hussle, Rage Against The Machine, and Talib Kweli.
Zohran Mamdani’s Reading List
American War by Omar El Akkad
“‘What was safety, anyway, but the sound of a bomb falling on someone else’s home?’ — a shock to how I see our city.” -ZM
“Government can deliver, not just fail. We can build a city of plenty, not scarcity.” -ZM
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
“To understand how housing access is a human right and how the system currently fails working folks.” -ZM
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
“Because affordability isn’t just cost — it’s geography, policy & power.” -ZM
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (also rec’d by Elizabeth Warren, Frank Ocean, Henry Rollins, Jane Elliott, J. Cole) & Talib Kweli)
“Safety and justice belong together — we can’t ignore one for the other.” -ZM
Capital in the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Piketty (also rec’d by AOC & Pussy Riot)
“To grasp how inequality breeds instability — our city deserves better distribution.” -ZM
The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro
“The story of NYC power, infrastructure, and the elite — so we know what we’re up against.” -ZM
Neither Settler nor Native by Mahmood Mamdani
“My father’s book — because colonial legacies shape our city too.” -ZM
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire (also rec’d by Noname)
“If education is liberation, then a city of learners is a city of power.” -ZM
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (also rec’d by John Cusack)
“When crises become the excuse, we must be ready with solutions rooted in justice, not profit.” -ZM
Politics by Simon Adams
(via BiblioCommons; photo by David Cabrera)
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