100 books like Dwellings

This novel won the National Book Award and it’s easy to see why. Written by a Native author about reservation life, it discusses a crime that occurred that—like many reservation crimes—went unsolved for a long time.

The book is informative and compelling, and it weaves Native practices and culture into the story. I found it particularly interesting because it includes characters and themes that resonated with my experiences.

This book of essays by the Seneca scholar and activist, John Mohawk, is vital because its title pinpoints what the center of my life and work is: focusing on Indigenous ways of thinking about the world as a vital and necessary alternative way of understanding the world to Western thought, which has brought us to the brink of climate collapse and has failed to solve, indeed has only increased, social and economic inequality.

I value the book, then, because it reminds me of the way to achieve real democracy.

I value Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education by the Cherokee writer Diane Glancy because it is an empathetic history, one that compels me to understand its subjects from their perspective, Plains Indian prisoners taken captive defending their lands from the U.S. invasion and shipped to Fort Marion Prison in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1875. There, the prisoners were subject to a regime of reeducation in order to “kill the Indian and save the man,” as the head of the prison and founder of the Carlisle Indian School Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt stated it.

This regime subsequently became the model for the Indian boarding schools. But Glancy brings home that this model of “dislocation” is “at the heart of [all] education,” such as mine:  a Jewish boy educated in an Episcopalian school where the curriculum without a thought erased my own culture.

From Sand Creek by Acoma Pueblo citizen Simon Oritz is one of my favorite books because in a little over 90 pages of poetry constructed in concise, elliptical form it captures the history of America that is largely erased from official narratives: the history of foundational American violence at home and abroad. Perhaps this narrative is becoming more visible now, particularly with the rise of films about this largely marginalized history. At its roots, this is the history of Native American genocide, epitomized by the massacre of peaceful Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Natives by the Colorado Volunteers at Sand Creek in 1864.

This book holds a special place in my heart as one of the first books I encountered on the history of science and religion. Lindberg's masterful exploration of the European scientific tradition from 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 served as my introduction to this captivating field of study. 

In many ways, I owe my journey as a historian of science to the insights gleaned from Lindberg's work. While I never had the privilege of meeting him before his passing, his scholarship continues to inspire and shape my understanding of the intricate relationship between science and religion.

For anyone embarking on their own exploration of this fascinating topic, Lindberg's book is an indispensable guide that will leave a lasting impression.

I have always loved books where the author tries to squeeze the entire world into a few short pages. Carolyn Merchant starts her extraordinary book with the observation that women and nature are often associated with one another—the nurturing mother—then launches into an argument about how the exploitation of the Earth and the domination of women have the same root causes: capitalism, but also patriarchy.

Along the way, I learned about witches, old ideas of magic, and how mining in Europe was once considered sacrilege, a violation of the Earth. After reading this book, I’ll never see science or history in quite the same way.

Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s book is my instruction manual for living with wonder and consideration for the world beyond our doors and phones.

I found myself enthralled by its lessons in transformation, as simple as many of them are. Learn the names of other species and listen to them. Walk barefoot. Wander aimlessly. Rooted as metaphor and reality, remained with me as a way of beginning to heal the damage caused by climate change, environmental degradation, and the attention economy.  

This book stopped me being scared of death – well almost. It is a wonderful read about how we are embodied creatures of planet Earth. Our very being is relationship. Take breathing for example. As you sit there you breathe in oxygen, nitrogen, and a little carbon dioxide. When you breathe out you release extra carbon dioxide – with that carbon coming from your body itself. You gift a little of your being in exchange for the oxygen - fragments that may end up in that tree outside your window. Once we understand that exchange is the essence of life, it helps us live well on our shared planet. As Weber explains, joy comes when we sense that life is increasing – for us and for others.

Our task then becomes to nurture life – the creative striving of all living things to become themselves and connect with others. Weber… show more.

Hailed as a “new genre of nature writing,” Mueller’s book is species-specific, dwelling upon the lives and deaths of salmon, yet the subject matter could apply to any creature that has become a commodity within late-stage capitalism. Mueller contrasts the Norwegian farmed-salmon industry and the increasing mechanization and reduction of living beings to things with wild salmon populations and Native people’s perspectives from the Pacific Northwest. Critically, he dares to take on the perspective of salmon, sprinkling memorable and moving vignettes throughout the book, helping readers imagine the world from a salmon’s-eye-view. This work of interspecies empathy is a rare and welcome contribution to thinking about personhood through a lens that is other-than-human.

I cannot imagine my life with animals without the understanding I have drawn from this book. While biologists and the public have long viewed domestication as a form of forced servitude, Budiansky details another revolutionary theory that some special animal species “choose” to throw their futures in with humans.

How this happened is a fascinating story that challenges our long-held assumptions and reveals our huge debt and responsibility to these animals who chose to live with us. This book is the foundation stone of my work with dogs and other domesticated animals.