90 books like The Man from Laramie

Essentially this is an homage to the American Cowboy as it tells of his demise as a lifestyle. While some say this one’s hard to read because of its episodic format, I found it the ideal setting for telling the background of the Cowboy’s life and times. Life doesn’t happen in such a structured way as most stories depict. As Monty fights against the progress that will consume him, the reader sees its inevitability. Lament it if you will, it’s a forward-moving engine that will not be stopped.

While this is a short story, not a novel, it is, in my opinion, the quintessential psychological Western. Depicting the struggle of an ordinary man saddled with extraordinary tasks, to maintain his honor and his values in the face of temptation, it delves into the minds of the two participants, and takes the reader on a wild ride as they wait for the train. Tension you could cut with a knife replaces action, keeping the reader on the edge of his/her seat until the end.

This was the first Western I read when I was young. It made an impression on me, not only as a Western, but as a classic story of good and evil with sharply drawn characters that make it come alive to the reader. Grey’s writing puts the reader right in the middle of every scene. And it has an ending you don’t see coming, but one that fits perfectly.

A new book by a new writer, this is one I had an editing hand in, and one I’ve come to love. It’s a gripping coming-of-age novel set in the 1840s against the backdrop of the vast push west. Both a personal story of a young man forced to survive in a violent land, and an epic story of wagons west along the Oregon Trail, it grabs the reader from the get-go and holds on to the very end. There are as many twists and turns to this tale as were present in the trail west itself.

A great insight in my life has been realizing that the Western world has tricked us into believing there is only one way to know and understand the world.

What do stories of ancient cultures from across the world have to do with creativity and healing? Wade Davis has spent his life living intimately with other cultures and plants; the lessons captured in this book require us to take pause and realize everything we have taken for granted about what we know and how we know it.

As Davis says, "rediscovering the diversity of the human spirit" requires us to unshackle ourselves from our biases and recognize that some things can’t be explained or understood through the narrow lens of the Western world.

Creativity and the imagination are fundamental to being human; this book caused me to question what I was missing by not fully recognizing them as a way… show more.

Cohen is a necessary starting point, but the contributions to Monsters and the Monstrous really highlight how far monster studies came in the first couple of decades it was around. The contributions in this volume range farther than the Western world, touching on topics in Africa, the Caribbean, Japan, and a host of others. There is also additional theory to account for shifts in time and culture when thinking about the monstrous and contributions from powerhouses in the field like Debra Higgs Strickland, Debbie Felton, and Michael Dylan Foster. I have personally found Six and Thompson’s article “From Hideous to Hedonist” to be useful every time I teach my course on Religion and the Monstrous. 

I know, it sounds absurd to recommend a book entitled Heller with a Gun as a romance. But in fact many books of the Western genre have all the elements of romance along with the ultra-American setting, action, and adventure that gave them their own niche. In this particular book, I found the Mr./Miss Right versus Mr./Miss Wrong dilemma and could not put the book down until the problem resolved itself in classic Western style.

J. Ross Browne experienced first-hand whaling in the early-to-mid 1800s, serving as a crewman on a Yankee whaler. His vivid account of life on board, and the gruesome business of whaling, is beautifully written, enlightening, and dramatic. In his review of the book, Melville said, “It is a book of unvarnished facts … [which] unquestionably presents a faithful picture of the life led by the twenty thousand seamen employed in the seven hundred vessels which now pursue their game under the American flag.” So impressed was Melville that he used Browne’s book as one of his primary sources while writing Moby-Dick.

This book is like a reminder of the wisdom that already lies latent within us (by “us” I’m identifying as a cis-gender woman, but that does not exclude anyone else, just helps to clarify). Rather than a gentle nudge, Dancing in the Flames’ approach to uncovering the buried dark goddess in modern culture is more of a slap in the face. A wake-up call that, I personally, have been intuiting for years. Woodman and Dickson weave together true historical accounts and cultural representations of why the dark goddess is essential for human and societal growth. Eerily similar to my highly sci-fi/fantastical book, I stumbled upon Dancing in the Flames while conducting research for my dark-fem-rising story. I hang on every word they write as it 100% rings true for me.

When I met Danielle Sunberg on Zoom during the pandemic, I was impressed with her ability to listen to her inner voice, to use it as the GPS for navigating her life.

Without relying on the language of the mystics, she describes her transformation from a corporate lawyer in Anne Taylor suits to a backpacking truth seeker as she travels the world in search of her real self. This deceptively simple book can carry the reader into their own insights on the nature of self, life, and spirit through the guidance and questions at the end of each chapter.

It's easily relatable to Westerners who have no interest in Eastern spirituality but are looking for a grounded awareness and higher consciousness. And it's a fun travelogue!