When I was in high school (and this was many decades ago) the only book that I was assigned to read that was even remotedly relating to anti Communism was "One Day in the Life of Denosovich (the only Solzhenitsyn book that was officially released by the USSR)." That was how bad things were and we never learned about the Holodomor; see Harvest of Despair (caution 55 minutes long) until Robert Conquest wrote The Harvest of Sorrow many many years later.
Run thee to Amazon and get “48 laws of power” by Robert Greene.
That’s all of it in a few hundred pages. Everything needed to know about 21st century earth.