In the US, "Black Reconstruction in America" by W.E.B. Dubois - detailing the revolutionary nature of post-civil war reconstruction that was squashed first by Lincoln then absolutely destroyed by Johnson.
I'm also seeking recommendations for histories of the indigenous struggle in North America!
I've been reading The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber, and David Wengrow. While I haven't finished it yet, it's an excellent analysis of how Human societies actually formed based on anthropological and archeological evidence.
Basically everything that Sapiens should have been, and they call out the lib version of Human history regularly.
Really upset that further books will likely never develop due to the death of Graeber.
10 Days that shook the World is a great, concrete, on the ground account of the days surrounding the October revolution in Russia when the bolsheviks seized power, I think it's very important to read
The Origins of the Modern World is a solid materialist account of how Europe came to be the dominant global power and the profit-driven mass violence that led to the rise of modern capitalism.
i don't think there are any. you ought to know the history of where you live & work, probably the country at large? who knows if you've had a marxist writer do that for you though?
theory needs to be/should be sufficient for you to be able interpret an account of events, even biased, if it isn't outright lying.
i don't think there's an essential stable of history books for everyone. if you're uruguayan the Tupamaros are pretty relevant, elsewhere substantially less. what i recommend and talk to people about around where i live is definitely not the same as what's important to someone in pakistan or angola.
i wouldn't want to discourage anybody from taking an interest or lessons from far afield, but if we're approaching this from what someone absolutely NEEDS to know, it's got to be local first.