100 books like A Demon-Haunted Land

For those interested in a compelling work of fiction built loosely around Nazism and the occult, Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is the perfect novel.

Whether it’s one of the protagonists, a young Jewish magician, escaping Nazi-occupied Central Europe in the coffin of the “Golem of Prague” or the eponymous cousins finding success with their own comic book series infused by contemporary esoterica, Kavalier & Clay evokes the world in which young, first and second generation Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe created the Marvel and DC superheroes and super(natural) villains, often allied with the Third Reich, that have defined our popular culture for the past eighty years. 

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s Occult Roots of Nazism is arguably the first scholarly monograph to take the relationship between occultism and Nazism seriously, providing a fascinating overview of the “secret Aryan cults” and “Ariosophic” beliefs that ostensibly influenced Nazi ideology.

While Goodrick-Clarke stops short of drawing a direct connection between prewar occult doctrines and Nazi policies during the Third Reich– indeed, his study concludes in 1935––no historian before or since has done as thorough a job, based on copious empirical research, of chronicling the eclectic and ubiquitous occult underground that helped shape the interwar folkish movement that produced Nazism.

Corinna Treitel’s Science for the Soul did for the occult what Goodrick-Clarke’s Occult Roots of Nazism did for Ariosophy, providing the first comprehensive account of the wide array of occult doctrines and esoteric sciences that flourished in Germany and Austria at the turn of the twentieth century.

While she does include a chapter on occultism in the Third Reich, Treitel is careful not to blame occultism for Nazism, showing how Theosophy and Anthroposophy (the progenitors of Ariosophy), astrology, parapsychology, spiritualism, and other esoteric doctrines provided a socially and politically diverse group of Germans a range of alternative beliefs and practices to help make sense of a modernizing, post-industrial, “disenchanted” world.

One of the two best books, with Anne Harrington’s Reenchanted Science, on the history of German occultism and “border science”.

An ideal complement to Goodrick-Clarke’s study of the links between Nazism and Ariosophy, Staudenmaier devotes his well-researched and comprehensive monograph to examining the relationship between fascism and Rudolf Steiner’s occult doctrine of Anthroposophy.

Like Goodrick-Clarke, Staudenmaier finds important points of ideological and sociological convergence between proponents of Anthroposophy and Nazism, including Waldorf Schools and biodynamic farming, but also highlights many instances of intellectual tension, political hostility, and persecution.

Just as importantly, Between Occultism and Nazism looks at the role of Anthroposophy in fascist Italy, providing an explicit comparative framework that is missing from most studies of Nazism and the occult. A must read for anyone interested in the “occult roots of Nazism” or the history of Western esotericism.

1987’s Communion made Whitley Strieber the world’s most famous alien abductee. Since then, many have derided him as a fantasist or even a charlatan.

Most attacks stem from his critics’ insistence on viewing Strieber’s experiences literally. Few stop to consider whether or not that approach may be misguided. In this collaboration with Rice University professor Dr. Jeffrey Kripal, Strieber’s firsthand accounts are placed in dialogue with religious scholarship, providing a useful framework for navigating the treacherous waters between the objective and subjective.

The Super Natural acknowledges that these things are—at least partially—"real" in a sense that modern culture would recognize. Their meaning, however, may well be something else entirely, best apprehended through our never-ending attempt to make sense of our place in the cosmos.

Set in the height of the Cold War, The Men Who Stare at Goats is the story of the US Army’s psychic warfare unit, the First Earth Battalion. These self-declared “warrior monks” trained in remote viewing and aspired to psychic slay capra with the force of their concentration.

Unlike the rest of the books on my list, The Men Who Stare at Goats is non-fiction. The bulk of the material in these pages are interviews with people in the First Earth Battalion.

Reading this book made me question the reality of psychic phenomena. Is there something to it? Or was this the result of a Soviet PSYOP (psychological operation, not psychic operation) to make the American military-industrial complex waste a lot of money?

Looking around me as a young man I found a grey world that had been stripped of all its glory and fabulousness by the exploitation and utilitarianism of human beings. 

Alexandra David-Neel was an amazing explorer. She was the first European woman to meet the Dalai Lama and in 1924 became the first to enter the forbidden Tibetan capital, Lhasa. She had already spent a decade travelling through China, living in a cave on the Tibetan border, where she learned about Buddhism from hermits, mystics, and bandits. 

She describes in this book how these people learnt such seemingly impossible skills such as telepathy, defying gravity, running for days without food or drink or sleep, and surviving with hardly any clothes in the subzero Himalayan blizzards. 

This magical world vanished when the Chinese invaded in 1947. 

To think that this miraculous way of life existed in the same century as me… show more.

I’ve reread this book almost as many times as Love in the Ruins. Although the book isn’t as well-known as some of the others I’m recommending, the title’s appropriate because reading these pages walloped my brain.

The novel within a novel written by a character who escapes from an asylum combines conspiracies, mind-control, flying sting rays, doppelgangers, and a delicious writing style. What keeps me engrossed is the love Spenser shows for his characters and his ability to craft a complex storyline from what is basically a fairy tale.

I have been praising this book for years and have no plans to stop anytime soon. Using investigatory skills and a keen sense of human pathos, journalist and NPR producer Horn tells the full-circle story of the parapsychology lab founded by the Rhines. She doggedly and accurately presents the “unbelievable” findings of the Duke lab and the struggle of its founders to swim against a tide of orthodox reaction. As a work of history, it is significant—and as a piece of dramatic historiography it is enthralling. 

How could I not include the first-ever fantasy/paranormal book I ever read? It delivers on the promised suspense, death, and romance to die for. But I most loved the way the story focused on Evie, the main character, finding herself. She is thrust on this path where she literally has no choice but to find out who she really is, what it means, and how to deal with it. She has to face some hard things for a teenager all while trying to still just be a kid. The best part of YA books is the path of discovering one’s self the MCs go on. This one resonated with me on a personal level.