On top of the other recommendations, I highly recommend Caliban and the Witch. It’s about gender roles and how they were shaped by feudalism and capitalism. It also does a really solid job explaining how the slaving economies of Rome / Carthage collapse and turn into an early feudal system of Lords and Serfs. It offers very material explanations of the actions and reactions in a 1,000-year struggle between the peasantry and the royalty.

It also talks about how much of our language has been shaped by the ruling class under feudalism.

But it’s mostly about women, and how the ruling class controlled/controls them.

The author opens by saying she’s trying to fill Marx’s blind spot of women’s roles in the class struggle.