Here are 100 books that Four Lost Cities fans have personally recommended if you like
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One way I bring lightness and wonder to my life is through the joy of observing something new around me in this world. The new thing might be the forty Heavenly Blue morning glories that bloomed one morning for my father and me, finding an ancient fossil shell in a skirt of fallen shale at the bottom of a cliff or hearing Balinese gamelan music for the first time. But each time one of these wonders lights up my day, I am reminded of how limited our ability to observe is. Each of these books gave me a view into a world I had not even dreamed about.
All my life I’ve loved looking closely at the natural world to see as much as possible: Why is that leaf broken? Was a chipmunk digging here? Is that a different kind of mushroom? But no matter how closely I looked, I was unaware of the overwhelming complexities and sophistication of the fungal world.
Sheldrake shows the interconnections, not metaphysical ones but actual physical and chemical connections, between fungi, plants, and even living, moving animals. If that chapter about ants doesn’t change how you see the world, I don’t know what will. Fungi own the world, and we are just lucky to live in it.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungi—the great connectors of the living world—and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems.
“Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.”—Ed Yong, author of I Contain Multitudes
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday
I started in publishing at the Advocate magazine, twenty years ago in its heyday, then moved to Alyson Books, who first published Emma Donoghue among many others, offering a place for queer writers showcasing queer stories to find their audience. Afterwards, I became involved with Gertrude literary journal, a beloved, 25-year-old non-profit, LGBTQA journal that has now evolved to The Gertrude Conference. All the while, I read, wrote, and supported queer stories, like these gems!
On the planet of January, one side is in permanent daylight and the other side is permanent night, with people managing to live on a strip of moderate light between the two extremes.
Sophie, a shy teenager, breaks the rules and is sent to the dark side to die, only she survives. While she is in the dark, she meets telepathic creatures who, despite their terrifying visage, are kind-hearted—a shock to someone raised in a community who believes the creatures (and others) are awful because of the way they look.
Together with her best friend, Bianca, they decide to save the human race, against all dark odds, including secret outlaws.
This TV series would showcase all the strange glory of Anders, along with the emotional depth that will have us rooting for our young heroines who literally go between the darkness and the light. Hey, J.J. Abrams, you listenin’?
"If you control our sleep, then you can own our dreams... And from there, it's easy to control our entire lives."
From the brilliant mind of Charlie Jane Anders ("A master absurdist"-New York Times; "Virtuoso"-NPR) comes a new novel of Kafkaesque futurism. Set on a planet that has fully definitive, never-changing zones of day and night, with ensuing extreme climates of endless, frigid darkness and blinding, relentless light, humankind has somehow continued apace-though the perils outside the built cities are rife with danger as much as the streets below.
But in a world where time means only what the ruling…
I’ve spent the past ten years reporting and writing true crime narratives about teenagers and hate, first in The 57 Bus and now in Accountable. My research has led me into some fascinating places and has left me convinced that we cannot prevent what we don’t understand. In both books I found that the young people who harmed others weren’t the stereotypical grimacing loners I’d always associated with hate and extremism. Instead, they were imitating behaviors that we see all around us. Being young, with brains that aren’t fully developed in important ways, and lacking the life experience that teaches us a more nuanced understanding of the world, they are ripe for radicalization.
The best antidote to extremism, in my view, is to reject the old canard that humans are selfish and xenophobic by nature.
Bregman’s optimistic and affirming book dispels this myth with fascinating research and persuasive storytelling. Along the way, he examines deep questions like why we persist in believing the worst about ourselves and one another. Humans are wired for altruism and compassion and the more we understand that, the more difficult it is to persuade us to act against our most basic instincts.
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A Guardian, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Daily Express Book of the Year
'Hugely, highly and happily recommended' Stephen Fry 'You should read Humankind. You'll learn a lot (I did) and you'll have good reason to feel better about the human race' Tim Harford 'Made me see humanity from a fresh perspective' Yuval Noah Harari
It's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have…
I’m a queer, nonbinary writer who has always loved reading and writing speculative fiction, whether it be dystopian novels, sci-fi, fantasy, and beyond. I think speculative fiction is such an effective and creative way to hold a mirror up to our society, explore traumatic and heavy themes, and ultimately, show us what it means to be a person, no matter how strange or unfamiliar the world is. Like many millennials, I grew up reading that awful transphobic woman’s magical series but soon realized how limiting that series was, and how there were so many better, smarter, more inclusive books out there, especially those that center queer and trans characters and know how to break my heart ten times over.
This book is utterly un-put-downable. I read it one, feverish sitting. It’s about a boy, Owen, who is literally born with a bird in his chest. She talks to him, and she’s quite funny and sometimes snarky. Owen is known as a Terror, and his mother does everything she can to try to protect him from the Army of Acronyms, aka doctors, nurses, social workers, and anyone who wants to study him and expose him.
Although this speculative premise plays a prominent role in the book, the heart of the book for me is this tender, queer, coming-of-age story about a boy trying to accept himself and let others accept and love him, too. It’s beautiful, smart, and aches in all the right places.
Longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2022 First Novel Prize
"A modern coming-of-age full of love, desperation, heartache, and magic" (Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author) about "the ways in which family, grief, love, queerness, and vulnerability all intersect" (Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author). Perfect for fans of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Thirty Names of Night.
Though Owen Tanner has never met anyone else who has a chatty bird in their chest, medical forums would call him a Terror. From the moment Gail emerged between Owen's ribs, his mother knew that she had to…
I’ve been an explorer since I was young. My first short trip was to Cahokia Mounds, a site so little is known about that researchers have yet to discover the name of the people who built the famous city of mounds. As I grew into an adult, I was drawn to visit the Pyramid of Chichen Itza in Mexico and Stonehenge in England. As a writer, I decided the one thing missing from the mysterious places field was a fun way to learn about them. So I wrote a mysterious places book in a trivia game format, as learning something new is always more fun when presented as a game.
After reading Lost Cities and Adventures Across America, I was filled with a sense of curiosity about exploring and uncovering ancient mysteries.
David Hatcher Childress, an archaeologist and author best known for his Ancient Aliens show, takes readers to Mayan cities, ancient canal systems, megalithic monuments, and Guatemala's jungles. Childress is a superb storyteller and leads the reader's thorough exploration of mysterious places, making it a book I recommend to all who enjoy mysterious places.
From the jungles of Central America to the deserts of the southwest down the back roads from coast to coast, maverick archaeologist and adventurer David Hatcher Childress takes the reader deep into unknown America. In this incredible book, search for lost Mayan cities and books of gold, discover an ancient canal system in Arizona, climb gigantic pyramids in the Midwest, explore megalithic monuments in New England, and join the astonishing quest for the lost cities throughout North America. From the war-torn jungles of Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras to the deserts, mountains and fields of Mexico, Canada, and the U.S.A. Childress…
As a former Division 1 basketball player at Marquette University and current ecommerce executive, I’m always looking for new sources of inspiration. Please enjoy my list and send me any comments on what you find inspiring!
This is a different type of inspiration, one rooted in exploration and going to places that no man has gone before. The author himself goes on a journey to find a lost city in the Honduran rainforest, and while sexy on the outside, discovers the stark challenges that exist in the world’s densest jungle. If you’re an adventure seeker, you’ll really enjoy this book.
The #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, named one of the best books of the year by The Boston Globe and National Geographic: acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest in this riveting narrative about the discovery of a lost civilization -- culminating in a stunning medical mystery.
Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who…
I first visited Pompeii on a school trip when I was 17. I have a clear memory of standing in the Forum and thinking it was the most amazing place I had ever been. Decades later, that feeling remains, and the sites destroyed by Vesuvius have become the focus of my research on ancient Rome. I have excavated in Pompeii, conducted epigraphic fieldwork in Herculaneum, and taught students at multiple universities around the UK about the cities, the people who lived there, and their destruction.I am fundamentally interested in the people, how they lived their lives, and have published widely on tombs, epigraphy, and politics in Pompeii.
Imagine re-creating the works of Shakespeare or Milton from the graffiti on the walls of Victorian England – impossible you’d say. But it is possible to find lines of the most famous poets of the Roman world scratched into the walls of Pompeii, and Milnor provides a systematic overview of how and why this literary re-production occurred, what it indicates about literacy and learning, and how differently the ancients viewed writing in public spaces.
In this volume, Milnor considers how the fragments of textual graffiti which survive on the walls of the Roman city of Pompeii reflect and refract the literary world from which they emerged. Focusing in particular on the writings which either refer to or quote canonical authors directly, Milnor uncovers the influence- in diction, style, or structure-of elite Latin literature as the Pompeian graffiti show significant connections with familiar authors such as Ovid, Propertius, and Virgil.
While previous scholarship has described these fragments as popular distortions of well-known texts, Milnor argues that they are important cultural products in their own right,…
I am a historian of ancient Rome. My interest was sparked in my high school Latin classes. On my first trip to Rome, several years later, I truly fell in love. I could see the famed orator delivering his fierce attacks against Catiline amid the grand temples of the Forum and its surrounding hills. I could imagine myself standing in a crowd, listening. In Washington DC, where I now live and teach at Georgetown University, there are classical buildings all around to keep me inspired. I have written a number of books about Roman political history and have also translated the biographer Suetonius and the historian Sallust.
No city of the Roman world survives more fully than Pompeii in southern Italy. Baths, bars, houses, and temples have been recovered, along with pots and pans, foodstuffs, medical instruments, and skeletons with evidence of an appallingly high rate of disease. For a knowledgeable and witty guide to the city you can’t beat Mary Beard, who helps us see it was not all marble columns and pretty paintings. I especially love her description of the House of the Tragic Poet, in which Edward Bulwer-Lytton set an early scene of his novel The Last Days of Pompeii, a dinner party hosted by the character Glaucus. Beard reveals that just behind this house was a cloth-processing workshop in which the main agent used would have been human urine. “In the background to Glaucus’ elegant dinner party,” writes Beard, “there must have been a distinctly nasty odor.”
Pompeii is the most famous archaeological site in the world, visited by more than two million people each year. Yet it is also one of the most puzzling, with an intriguing and sometimes violent history, from the sixth century BCE to the present day.
Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. But the eruptions are only part of the story. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. She explores what kind of town it was-more like Calcutta or…
I have had a lifelong love of history, especially ancient history, and have spent years studying it for both interest and pleasure. I also love stories, so I decided to put my knowledge of Roman history to good use, providing what I hope is an authentic backdrop to my novels.
We all love Mary Beard, and this superb book looks into the daily life of the people who lived in Pompeii before its destruction, revealing plenty of fascinating detail, and excellent explanation and commentary. Definitely one of the best books about daily life in an ordinary Roman town.
The ruins of Pompeii, buried by an explosion of Vesuvius in 79 CE, offer the best evidence we have of everyday life in the Roman empire. This remarkable book rises to the challenge of making sense of those remains, as well as exploding many myths: the very date of the eruption, probably a few months later than usually thought; or the hygiene of the baths which must have been hotbeds of germs; or the legendary number of brothels, most likely only one; or the massive death count, maybe less than ten per cent of the population.
I was born in Scotland in 1977 and always enjoyed studying history – well, the interesting bits, not so much what they taught us in school. My first book in the Forest Lord series, Wolf’s Head, was set in medieval England and it’s a fast-paced, violent retelling of the Robin Hood legends.I’ve since sold over 130,000 books in the past few years. As a working class man from a little village in Scotland, I’m honestly amazed at how many people enjoy my writing.
A collection of interlinked short stories about the volcanic destruction of Pompeii which works better than I thought it would. A lot better, as this is one of the most moving books I’ve ever read, bringing me to tears in places. Six authors, all looking at the doom of quite different characters, from gladiators to senators to a pregnant woman and more, you expect the whole thing to be utterly depressing but, somehow, it isn’t. I must admit I read this when I was in a very fragile state of mind having just suffered a terrible tragedy of my own, so it’s possible that affected my reading of A Day of Fire and how I responded to it, but I know it was extremely well written and I was so glad to have read it. I think you should too.
Pompeii was a lively resort flourishing in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius at the height of the Roman Empire. When Vesuvius erupted in an explosion of flame and ash, the entire town would be destroyed. Some of its citizens died in the chaos, some escaped the mountain's wrath . . . and these are their stories: A boy loses his innocence in Pompeii's flourishing streets. An heiress dreads her wedding day, not knowing it will be swallowed by fire. An ex-legionary stakes his entire future on a gladiator bout destined never to be finished. A crippled senator welcomes death, until…
