Love Cradle of Gold? Readers share 100 books like Cradle of Gold...

By Christopher Heaney,

Here are 100 books that Cradle of Gold fans have personally recommended if you like Cradle of Gold. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum

Gail Levin Author Of Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography

From my list on the fate of the Edward Hopper Estate.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™m a Distinguished Professor of art history at CUNY and biographer of artists. I grew up in Atlanta, attended college in Boston, and have worked in New York since my twenties. With a new Ph.D. in art history from Rutgers, I began as curator of the Hopper Collection at the Whitney Museum, assigned to produce a definitive catalogue of all Edward Hopperā€™s authentic art. His papers were missing except for his record books that recorded every time a work left for sale, loan, or gift. I traced each work as it left Hopperā€™s possession and discovered a massive number of undocumented artworks stolen from the estate, which the Whitney still wants to cover up.

Gail's book list on the fate of the Edward Hopper Estate

Gail Levin Why did Gail love this book?

This very well-researched and gripping book taught me the meaning of the term ā€œlaunderingā€ in the art market and revealed the duplicity of the late art dealer, Larry Fleischman, who both collected and sold stolen antiquities and marketed undocumented works taken from Edward Hopperā€™s estate.

He didnā€™t care about provenance or history of ownership and is quoted in this book as saying: ā€œEverything comes from somewhere.ā€

Although I knew and dealt with Fleishman, I trusted him and was tricked by him.

By Jason Felch, Ralph Frammolino,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Chasing Aphrodite as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A ā€œthrilling, well-researchedā€ account of years of scandal at the prestigious Getty Museum (Ulrich Boser, author of The Gardner Heist).
 
In recent years, several of Americaā€™s leading art museums have voluntarily given up their finest pieces of classical art to the governments of Italy and Greece. Why would they be moved to such unheard-of generosity? The answer lies at the Getty, one of the worldā€™s richest and most troubled museums, and scandalous revelations that it had been buying looted antiquities for decades. Drawing on a trove of confidential museum records and candid interviews, these two journalists give us a fly-on-the-wallā€¦


Book cover of The Lie Became Great: The Forgery of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures

Roger Atwood Author Of Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World

From my list on the looting of the Ancient World.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™m a journalist, critic, and poet who has spent a career engaging with the world. I love telling stories, and I strive to put beauty and tension into everything I write. Iā€™ve had great editors ā€“ theyā€™ve published my work in The Guardian, National Geographic, ARTnews, The Washington Post, The Times Literary Supplement, and Archaeology, where I am a contributing editor, and many other places ā€“ but it always comes down to me and my computer. And often a plane ticket and a suitcase. 

Roger's book list on the looting of the Ancient World

Roger Atwood Why did Roger love this book?

This is a pioneering, extraordinarily well-documented exposĆ© of how famous museums have filled their shelves with looted artifacts and more than a few fakes ā€“ which, the author explains, tend to flock together. The author was a whistle-blowing curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He knows his stuff. So why was I reluctant to recommend this title?  Because itā€™s so hard to find and, with hundreds of photographs, costs upwards of $100. If you can find a used copy, grab it, and if your local library has it, kiss a librarian and make a donation.

By Oscar White Muscarella,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Lie Became Great as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Lie Became Great explores the closed society of international plunderers and forgers which thrives as a subculture of the Art World.
These multi-cultural denizens include antiquity dealers, collectors, museum curators, forgers working in conjunction with auction houses, museums and galleries. Forgeries are made to be sold, and a great number pass into the Art World - collections, exhibitions, catalogues, and popular and scholarly journals - complete with their fabricated stories of excavation, and how they were found. The Lie Became Great documents the success and activities of one small corner of this vast network - artifacts form the Ancientā€¦


Book cover of The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities-- From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest Museums

Roger Atwood Author Of Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World

From my list on the looting of the Ancient World.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™m a journalist, critic, and poet who has spent a career engaging with the world. I love telling stories, and I strive to put beauty and tension into everything I write. Iā€™ve had great editors ā€“ theyā€™ve published my work in The Guardian, National Geographic, ARTnews, The Washington Post, The Times Literary Supplement, and Archaeology, where I am a contributing editor, and many other places ā€“ but it always comes down to me and my computer. And often a plane ticket and a suitcase. 

Roger's book list on the looting of the Ancient World

Roger Atwood Why did Roger love this book?

No book exposes the tricks of the trade that smugglers and dealers use to launder looted artifacts like this one. Focusing on a wave of looting in southern Italy in the 1980s and ā€˜90s, the authors show how European and American millionaire collectors fueled the ransacking of ancient sites. Itā€™s a substantive, entertaining read about crime and the contradictions of modern Italy by two brilliant writers.   

By Peter Watson, Cecilia Todeschini,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Medici Conspiracy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The story begins, as stories do in all good thrillers, with a botched robbery and a police chase. Eight Apuleian vases of the fourth century B.C. are discovered in the swimming pool of a German-based art smuggler. More valuable than the recovery of the vases, however, is the discovery of the smuggler's card index detailing his deals and dealers. It reveals the existence of a web of tombaroli ,tomb raiders, who steal classical artifacts, and a network of dealers and smugglers who spirit them out of Italy and into the hands of wealthy collectors and museums. Peter Watson, a formerā€¦


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorā€”and only womanā€”on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route upā€¦

Book cover of Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World

Roger Atwood Author Of Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World

From my list on the looting of the Ancient World.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™m a journalist, critic, and poet who has spent a career engaging with the world. I love telling stories, and I strive to put beauty and tension into everything I write. Iā€™ve had great editors ā€“ theyā€™ve published my work in The Guardian, National Geographic, ARTnews, The Washington Post, The Times Literary Supplement, and Archaeology, where I am a contributing editor, and many other places ā€“ but it always comes down to me and my computer. And often a plane ticket and a suitcase. 

Roger's book list on the looting of the Ancient World

Roger Atwood Why did Roger love this book?

The long history of pillage as an act of colonial conquest ā€“ Napoleon looting Egypt, Britain looting Greece, among many others ā€“ is well-told in this solid, historically grounded account. Why are so many of the worldā€™s great museums filled with treasures from ancient civilizations? This book tells you how it happened, while also showing why countries stripped of their heritage are demanding it back. There are a few books out there entitled Loot: this is the one to read. 

By Sharon Waxman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Loot as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For the past two centuries, the West has plundered the treasures of the ancient world to fill its great museums, but in recent years the countries where ancient civilizations originated have begun to push back, taking museums to court, prosecuting curators, and threatening to force the return of these priceless objects. Sharon Waxman brings us inside this high-stakes conflict, from the great cities of the West to Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Italy, as these countries face down the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. She shows how the actions of a few determinedā€¦


Book cover of 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Eran Pichersky Author Of Plants and Human Conflict

From my list on how plants have had a dramatic influence on human history.

Why am I passionate about this?

After serving in the military for several years, I pursued a scientific career as a plant biologist. It was during my military service in a unit that spent most of our time in the wilderness that I discovered plants, and particularly their smells. One cannot help itā€“if you step or crawl on a plant, you will smell it. As a military history buff, I also learned that many wars were fought over plants, and so I decided to write a book that combines the twoā€“explaining what these plants do, why they are so important to people, and, therefore, how plants basically drive human behavior, often to violence. 

Eran's book list on how plants have had a dramatic influence on human history

Eran Pichersky Why did Eran love this book?

This is the real title of the book, referring to the year 1493 AD.

Even as a plant biologist, I had no idea how much Columbusā€™ trips across the Atlantic Ocean scrambled the world's living species. The flora and fauna of the world today look nothing like they did beforehand.

By Charles C. Mann,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked 1493 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER ā€¢ A deeply engaging history of how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the worldā€”from the highly acclaimed author of 1491. ā€¢ "Fascinating...Lively...A convincing explanation of why our world is the way it is." ā€”The New York Times Book Review

Presenting the latest research by biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the post-Columbian network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico Cityā€”where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interactedā€”the center of the world. In this history, Mannā€¦


Book cover of William Clark and the Shaping of the West

Larry E. Morris Author Of The Fate of the Corps: What Became of the Lewis and Clark Explorers After the Expedition

From my list on Lewis and Clark, their lives, and the impact of their expedition.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was browsing a bookstore around 1996 when I spotted a book about Lewis and Clark. I took a look, saw a list of the members of the expedition, and realized I hardly knew anything about those individuals. I wondered who they were and what happened to them during and after their trek across the country. I started reading books and articles and making trips to conventions or archives in places like St. Louis and Philadelphia. It has been a great twenty-five years, and my passion for Lewis and Clark has never ebbed. I hope you enjoy the books discussed here as much as I have.

Larry's book list on Lewis and Clark, their lives, and the impact of their expedition

Larry E. Morris Why did Larry love this book?

The versatile Landon Jones is a former editor of People magazine and the author of Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation, but it is his biography of Clark that really thrills me. This book combines solid research with vibrant, engrossing prose that is always a pleasure to read. You get to know the intriguingā€”and sometimes enigmaticā€”William Clark before, during, and after the expedition.

By Landon Y. Jones,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked William Clark and the Shaping of the West as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Between 1803 and 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark cocaptained the most famous expedition in American history. But while Lewis ended his life just three years after the expedition, Clark, as the highest-ranking federal official in the West, spent three decades overseeing its consequences: Indian removal and the destruction of Native America. In a rare combination of storytelling and scholarship, bestselling author Landon Y. Jones vividly depicts Clark's life and the dark and bloody ground of America's early West, capturing the qualities of character and courage that made Clark an unequaled leader in America's grander enterprise: the shaping of theā€¦


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Book cover of The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram: An Elizabethan Sailor in Native North America

The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram by Dean Snow,

An ordinary sailor named David Ingram walked 3600 miles from Mexico to Canada over the course of eleven months in 1568-9. There, he and two companions were rescued by a French ship on the Bay of Fundy. They were the first Englishmen to explore the interior of North America.

Englishā€¦

Book cover of Invisible Cities

Michael Batty Author Of The Computable City: Histories, Technologies, Stories, Predictions

From my list on cities that are not what they seem.

Why am I passionate about this?

There are as many ways of thinking about cities as there are people who live in them, and by the end of this century, it is clear we will all be living in cities of one size or another. Cities are in effect the crucibles where all technological and cultural change takes place. They are the drivers of prosperity while also the harbingers of chaos, decline, and war. What makes them fascinating is that as soon as we begin to peel back the layers that compose the city, our understanding of them begins to change: they metamorphose into different conceptions where there is no agreement as to what they are or what they might become.

Michael's book list on cities that are not what they seem

Michael Batty Why did Michael love this book?

Imagining different cities from different viewpoints in history is the focus of Calvinoā€™s wonderful set of vignettes between Marco Polo from his 13th-century travelogue and Kublai Kahn as they explore different ways they see cities that lie along the Silk Road. Weaving fact into fiction, they point up the essential logic of how cities are formed and how they evolve. What we remember, how we perceive these memories, and the size and shape of cities are all ideas which is the canvas on which Calvino describes the many cities of our imagination.

This is a wonderful set of storiesā€“you can dip into them and read them if you are on the subway or waiting in the dentist's surgery or anywhere where you get a free moment. The stories are memorable.

By Italo Calvino,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Invisible Cities as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A subtle and beautiful meditation' Sunday Times

In Invisible Cities Marco Polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city: Venice. As Gore Vidal wrote 'Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvellous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant.'


Book cover of White Eskimo: Knud Rasmussen's Fearless Journey into the Heart of the Arctic

Caroline McCullagh Author Of Quest For The Ivory Caribou

From my list on adventure in the Arctic and Antarctic.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a teenager, I started reading about people who lived in marginal places, such as the Eskimos of the far north and the Kung San of South Africa. Living a middle-class American life it was difficult for me to understand how people could not only live in those places but also love them. After I raised my children, my husband encouraged me to return to college, and I did, majoring in anthropology. I learned about the deep connections that bind all peopleā€”love of home and family. By learning about other peopleā€™s lives, much of what confused me about my own fell away. 

Caroline's book list on adventure in the Arctic and Antarctic

Caroline McCullagh Why did Caroline love this book?

Inuit and Danish in heritage, Knud Rasmussen is one of the major stars of Arctic research. He led one of the most famous explorations of northern Canada, The Fifth Thule Expedition, and documented the lives and culture of the people who lived there.

This modern biography doesnā€™t have the drama and excitement of firsthand accounts, but itā€™s comprehensive and well-written. It has many interesting details of the lives of both Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen. Additionally, it gives readers a look at the larger context of politics and exploration in the first half of the 20th century.  

By Stephen Bown,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked White Eskimo as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Among the explorers made famous for revealing hitherto impenetrable cultures,T. E. Lawrence and Wilfred Thesiger in the Middle East, Richard Burton in Africa,Knud Rasmussen stands out not only for his physical bravery but also for the beauty of his writing. Part Danish, part Inuit, Rasmussen made a courageous three-year journey by dog sled from Greenland to Alaska to reveal the common origins of all circumpolar peoples. Lovers of Arctic adventure, exotic cultures, and timeless legend will relish this gripping tale by Stephen R. Bown, known as "Canada's Simon Winchester."


Book cover of This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland

Laura Galloway Author Of Dalvi: Six Years in the Arctic Tundra

From my list on life changing books on life in the Arctic (and other cold climates!).

Why am I passionate about this?

Why I chose to write about cold climates: I spent nearly seven years living in the North of Norway in the SĆ”mi reindeer herding village called Guovdageaidnu, or Kautokeino in Norwegian. I cherish my time in that part of the world. 

Laura's book list on life changing books on life in the Arctic (and other cold climates!)

Laura Galloway Why did Laura love this book?

I had never been to Greenland when I first read Gretal Erlichā€™s book, and I knew very little about this mysterious continent. What I loved most about Erlichā€™s writing is that she really takes readers on a journey, introducing us to the people she meets in her travels, which are as fascinating as her singular way of describing the landscape, which is like no other place on earth.

Many years later, I travelled to Greenland and appreciated the accuracy of her descriptions firsthand. 

By Gretel Ehrlich,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked This Cold Heaven as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For the last decade, Gretel Ehrlich has been obsessed by an island, a terrain, a culture, and the treacherous beauty of a world that is defined by ice. In This Cold Heaven she combines the story of her travels with history and cultural anthropology to reveal a Greenland that few of us could otherwise imagine.

Ehrlich unlocks the secrets of this severe land and those who live there; a hardy people who still travel by dogsled and kayak and prefer the mystical four months a year of endless darkness to the gentler summers without night. She discovers the twenty-three wordsā€¦


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Book cover of Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption

Who Is a Worthy Mother? by Rebecca Wellington,

I grew up thinking that being adopted didnā€™t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Courtā€™s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over womenā€™s reproductive rights placesā€¦

Book cover of The Voyage of the Narwhal

Cynthia Reeves Author Of The Last Whaler

From my list on survival in extreme polar environments.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™ve had a lifelong passion for all things Arctic that began in childhood as I devoured many tragic tales of doomed Arctic explorers. This fascination later merged with concern for human impacts on this fragile ecosystem. Though I hate the cold and suffer from vertigo, I participated in the 2017 Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Expedition that sailed Svalbardā€™s western shores. Among other experiences, I witnessed a massive glacier calving and walked on an ice floe. Determined to fully absorb Svalbardā€™s setting for my creative work, I spent two subsequent residencies in Longyearbyenā€”one in the dark season and one as the light returnedā€”and I signed on for another expedition to circumnavigate the archipelago.

Cynthia's book list on survival in extreme polar environments

Cynthia Reeves Why did Cynthia love this book?

Like Brockmeierā€™s book, this book is in my top-five all-time novels. I can fall in love with a novel purely for its language, and Barrettā€™s ability to describe the settings her characters encounter is unparalleled. It, too, has a rare polar setting, this time aboard the ship the Narwhal bound for the Arctic in 1855 to find the remains of a previous, lost expedition. So visceral are her descriptions that they put me right back in the Arctic.

Sheā€™s also masterful at interleaving science and history with her charactersā€™ desires without becoming didactic. One of her protagonists, the scholar-naturalist Erasmus Darwin Wells, screens the world and his philosophical musings through the lens of his scientific inclinations. I admire novels that manage to teach me something while not feeling as if the author is desperate to cram all the research s/he has acquired into the book. Barrett succeeds in avoiding thisā€¦

By Andrea Barrett,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Voyage of the Narwhal as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Capturing a crucial moment in the history of exploration-the mid-nineteenth century romance with the Arctic-Andrea Barrett's compelling novel tells the story of a fateful expedition. Through the eyes of the ship's scholar-naturalist, Erasmus Darwin Wells, we encounter the Narwhal's crew, its commander, and the far-north culture of the Esquimaux. In counterpoint, we meet the women left behind in Philadelphia, explorers only in imagination. Together, those who travel and those who stay weave a web of myth and mystery, finally discovering what they had not sought, the secrets of their own hearts.


Book cover of Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum
Book cover of The Lie Became Great: The Forgery of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures
Book cover of The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities-- From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest Museums

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5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in explorers, architecture, and environmentalism?

Explorers 112 books
Architecture 84 books
Environmentalism 197 books