Here are 100 books that Grounded Authority fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m the grandson of a coal miner from a multi-generational, Ohio family. What matters most to me is having some integrity and being morally okay with folks. I never thought of myself as an environmentalist, just as someone trying to figure out what we should be learning to be decent people in this sometimes messed-up world. From there, I was taken into our environmental situation, its planetary injustice, and then onto studying the history of colonialism. This adventure cracked open my midwestern common sense and made me rethink things. Happily, it has only reinforced my commitment to, and faith in, moral relations, giving our word, being accountable, and caring.
I love how Dipesh’s book shows a historian at the height of his powers explaining how history has become geological. Decades ago, Chakrabarty began as someone arguing for a history that made Europe “provincial”. Now he argues that all human history is relative to planetary time. His writing is infused with humanism and is up to date on Earth System Science.
For the past decade, historian Dipesh Chakrabarty has been one of the most influential scholars addressing the meaning of climate change. Climate change, he argues, upends long-standing ideas of history, modernity, and globalization. The burden of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age is to grapple with what this means and to confront humanities scholars with ideas they have been reluctant to reconsider-from the changed nature of human agency to a new acceptance of universals.
Chakrabarty argues that we must see ourselves from two perspectives at once: the planetary and the global. This distinction is central to Chakrabarty's work-the…
I’m the grandson of a coal miner from a multi-generational, Ohio family. What matters most to me is having some integrity and being morally okay with folks. I never thought of myself as an environmentalist, just as someone trying to figure out what we should be learning to be decent people in this sometimes messed-up world. From there, I was taken into our environmental situation, its planetary injustice, and then onto studying the history of colonialism. This adventure cracked open my midwestern common sense and made me rethink things. Happily, it has only reinforced my commitment to, and faith in, moral relations, giving our word, being accountable, and caring.
Steve’s book is analytically challenging, but he has great examples and a knack for conceptualizing the core problems that are making it so hard for our world to grapple with climate change and things like mass extinction. He shows how there are three interlocking problems that all go back to how the modern state system was created as something competitive and uncoordinated, abstract from the land it’s on, and short-sighted with its politics.
Climate change is arguably the great problem confronting humanity, but we have done little to head off this looming catastrophe. In The Perfect Moral Storm, philosopher Stephen Gardiner illuminates our dangerous inaction by placing the environmental crisis in an entirely new light, considering it as an ethical failure. Gardiner clarifies the moral situation, identifying the temptations (or "storms") that make us vulnerable to a certain kind of corruption. First, the world's most affluent nations are tempted to pass on the cost of climate change to the poorer and weaker citizens of the world. Second, the present generation is tempted to…
I’m the grandson of a coal miner from a multi-generational, Ohio family. What matters most to me is having some integrity and being morally okay with folks. I never thought of myself as an environmentalist, just as someone trying to figure out what we should be learning to be decent people in this sometimes messed-up world. From there, I was taken into our environmental situation, its planetary injustice, and then onto studying the history of colonialism. This adventure cracked open my midwestern common sense and made me rethink things. Happily, it has only reinforced my commitment to, and faith in, moral relations, giving our word, being accountable, and caring.
Daggett’s award-winning book is a good example of a turn in political studies to understand the roots of our environmental problems by grasping how the way we organize society was shaped during early capitalism, colonialism, and the industrial revolution. Her book is also an example of the turn to energy politics which will define this century for some time. Check out the way this book uses history and old steampunk-esque documents to show us the bizarre dreams of the industrial revolution as these were tied to exploiting laborers for the sake of the wealth generation of the few!
In The Birth of Energy Cara New Daggett traces the genealogy of contemporary notions of energy back to the nineteenth-century science of thermodynamics to challenge the underlying logic that informs today's uses of energy. These early resource-based concepts of power first emerged during the Industrial Revolution and were tightly bound to Western capitalist domination and the politics of industrialized work. As Daggett shows, thermodynamics was deployed as an imperial science to govern fossil fuel use, labor, and colonial expansion, in part through a hierarchical ordering of humans and nonhumans. By systematically excavating the historical connection between energy and work, Daggett…
I’m the grandson of a coal miner from a multi-generational, Ohio family. What matters most to me is having some integrity and being morally okay with folks. I never thought of myself as an environmentalist, just as someone trying to figure out what we should be learning to be decent people in this sometimes messed-up world. From there, I was taken into our environmental situation, its planetary injustice, and then onto studying the history of colonialism. This adventure cracked open my midwestern common sense and made me rethink things. Happily, it has only reinforced my commitment to, and faith in, moral relations, giving our word, being accountable, and caring.
For folks who are now thinking how the heck can we make political progress in this locked up and self-destructive world? this book is a clear guide. It breaks down the major things that we should be thinking about as we head into a climate destabilized world. Its core idea is especially relevant and hearkens back to what Pasternak described in her work for the Algonquins of Barriere Lake: the “first virtue” of institutions going forward needs to their responsiveness to ecological feedback, even before their justice. This makes sense, too! Without our institutions being “ecologically reflexive,” they can never be just. They won’t be able to sustain fairness over generations! That’s one of the big problems Gardiner found.
The Politics of the Anthropocene is a sophisticated yet accessible treatment of how human institutions, practices, and principles need to be re-thought in response to the challenges of the Anthropocene, the emerging epoch of human-induced instability in the Earth system and its life-support capacities. However, the world remains stuck with practices and modes of thinking that were developed in the Holocene - the epoch of around 12,000 years of unusual stability in the Earth system, toward the end of which modern institutions such as states and capitalist markets arose. These institutions persist despite their potentially catastrophic failure to respond to…
My life and work have been profoundly affected by the central circumstance of my existence: I was born into a very large military Catholic family in the United States of America. As a child surrounded by many others in the 60s, I wrote, performed, and directed family plays with my numerous brothers and sisters. Although I fell in love with a Canadian and moved to Canada, my family of origin still exerts considerable personal influence. My central struggle, coming from that place of chaos, order, and conformity, is to have the courage to live an authentic life based on my own experience of connectedness and individuality, to speak and be heard.
Saul Indian Horse narrates this heartbreaking, rich story about a youth who is a prisoner in a government-sanctioned boarding school, surrounded by violence and cruelty, and yet speaks in a resilient and courageous voice as he struggles to find salvation from the destruction of his family.
I love it because Saul’s voice to tell his story brings me, the reader, so close to him in empathy that I feel him in my heart. In the midst of his daily reality in a horrific boarding school, Saul is surrounded by institutional and personal cruelty. At the urging of a priest, he finds tentative salvation in hockey, where he proves himself undeniably gifted.
His intuition, speed, hard work, and determination are remarkable against the indignities, taunts, racism, and hatred he encounters in the ruling white world. The voice of this protagonist is so authentic, so moving, and so spare, and yet the…
Named a "Best Novel of the Decade" by Literary Hub
Saul Indian Horse is a child when his family retreats into the woods. Among the lakes and the cedars, they attempt to reconnect with half-forgotten traditions and hide from the authorities who have been kidnapping Ojibway youth. But when winter approaches, Saul loses everything: his brother, his parents, his beloved grandmother—and then his home itself.
Alone in the world and placed in a horrific boarding school, Saul is surrounded by violence and cruelty. At the urging of a priest, he finds a tentative salvation in hockey. Rising at dawn to…
I'm a world-class underwater explorer, writer, photographer, speaker,
and filmmaker. A pioneer of technical rebreather diving, I have led expeditions
into icebergs in Antarctica, volcanic lava tubes, and submerged caves
worldwide. As a child, these fanciful places were just a part of my wildest
dreams. The Aquanaut tells the story of how I turned my imaginative journeys
into reality and became a celebrated underwater explorer.
Simple lyrical illustrations bring this story about commitments to life.
A wise grandfather guides his granddaughter on a journey of discovery teaching
her about indigenous perspectives. This important book is moving and essential
for readers of all ages. It offers authentic historic perspectives and helps to
describe the responsibility of truth and reconciliation.
The first treaty that was made was between the earth and the sky. It was an agreement to work together. We build all of our treaties on that original treaty.
On the banks of the river that have been Mishomis's home his whole life, he teaches his granddaughter to listen-to hear both the sounds and the silences, and so to learn her place in Creation. Most importantly, he teaches her about treaties-the bonds of reciprocity and renewal that endure for as long as the sun shines, the grass grows, and the rivers flow.
Accompanied by beautiful illustrations by Luke Swinson…
The inner world of people has always fascinated me, which is why I created the initiative “student for students” where people could just come and talk about what they are going through. In countless sensitive conversations, I got to know many people struggling with the question “to be or not to be”. Then, my sister took her life. I accepted her decision. However, many struggled to do the same. “How can she do this to us?”, “It was selfish of her”, “But she was intelligent.” etc. Countless statements showed that people could understand, but not comprehend what happened. Therefore, I want to create awareness for mental health topics.
This book by my author friend Marlene puts together the shards of colourful glass to reveal the beautiful mosaic of Tess, a self-made but shattered woman feeling closer to a stranger than to herself, recounting stories about Native Americans, Africans, and the farm life of the poor early settlers in Canada.
I like this book because it addresses multiple personality disorders. I think while it is easy for most to relate to physical illness, it can be tough to relate to mental illness. Speaking from experience, someone said uncomprehendingly after a suicide, “But she was intelligent,” as if mental disablement and mental illness were the same thing. We can also catch a cold without being physically disabled.
I'm a lapsed lawyer who decided as an empty-nest project to take a few history of medicine courses just for fun. One thing led to another and I found myself with a PhD and a book about eugenics and law to my name. I love the history of medicine. It connects us right back to the cavemen who worried about the same things we worry about today – illness, injury, our bodies, reproduction, death, dying. The history of eugenics is really a part of that history and it is filled with laws – coerced reproductive sterilization, marriage restrictions based on so-called “fitness,” etc. So it's a perfect union of my background and my newfound love.
This book should be made into a movie! Yes, it is written by two legal historians and yes, it is about a court case, but it reads like a thriller. Great characters, twists and turns in the plot, prime ministers, feisty ladies, the whole nine yards. It is the story of how a British court decided that women were “persons” and thus could be appointed to the Canadian Senate. At the time, only certain “persons” were eligible and only men were considered “persons.” It is not about eugenics, but the events take place around 1929 and the authors do a great job of explaining what Canadian society was like then. This helps us appreciate why the ground was so fertile for eugenic ideas and why women like the “persons” involved in the story were also eugenicists.
On 18 October 1929, John Sankey, England's reform-minded Lord Chancellor, ruled in the Persons case that women were eligible for appointment to Canada's Senate. Initiated by Edmonton judge Emily Murphy and four other activist women, the Persons case challenged the exclusion of women from Canada's upper house and the idea that the meaning of the constitution could not change with time. The Persons Case considers the case in its political and social context and examines the lives of the key players: Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, and the other members of the "famous five," the politicians who opposed the appointment of…
I wasn’t a fan of reading when I was young. I was a lazy reader. Subjects and genres were always chosen for me during education, until I hunted for my own. I used to write a lot more than reading in early high school. I wrote a horror journal, submitted to my English teacher every week. He told me that my writing was good but advised me that reading the genre could help develop my ideas. Funny, a young teenager couldn’t work that out? So, off I went to the local bookstore and bought my first horror novel. I devoured it within a week. I've been a reader and writer of horror ever since.
A book I’d wanted to read for a long time, but it wasn’t until later in life I was able to get it. When I was just on the early stages of my writing career, my now longtime friend, Marty, said he had a spare copy of Cabal laying around and offered to send it to me. Marty was my writing mentor at the time as he’d been writing horror for many years previous, and his work is inspiring. So, knowing I was getting a book in the mail from my mentor, to whom I hadn’t met in person yet, was very exciting. The book itself was a tired secondhand copy (which I was told it was) yet this gave it more special meaning. Even the cover was a little torn and it was a pocket edition. So, I sat back with this little book, which I still have as…
A fabulous journey through the mind of the master of dark imaginative fiction, Clive Barker.
The nightmare had begun....
Boone knew that there was no place on this earth for him now; no happiness here, not even with Lori. He would let Hell claim him, let Death take him there.
But Death itself seemed to shrink from Boone. No wonder, if he had indeed been the monster who had shattered, violated and shredded so many others' lives.
And Decker had shown him the proof - the hellish photographs where the last victims were forever stilled, splayed in the last obscene…
As a kid, I always wanted to be a Secret Service agent. As an adult, I became one. The job introduced me to the classified and shadowy world of national security. I traveled the globe, working in places I'd only read about in novels and meeting people who seemed like well-written characters from a book. When I was assigned as a liaison agent to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, I attended numerous FBI and CIA schools—even the facility known as The Farm. But through it all, I read! When I retired and had time to think about what I did, I figured I'd try writing.
For me, Argo is one of those rare finds in spy books. It is a book about an actual intelligence operation that went as planned, written by a living CIA intelligence officer who took part in it.
One of the hallmarks of intelligence operations is making the enemy believe what you want them to think. Misinformation and disinformation comprise a large part of the work, but sometimes, it all comes down to good old-fashioned deception. That's what makes Argo work.
And, hey, any book good enough to be made into a movie that wins an Oscar for Best Picture is worth my time.
Argo by Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio - the declassified CIA story behind the Oscar-winning film
WINNER OF 'BEST PICTURE' AT THE ACADEMY AWARDS, THE BAFTAS AND THE GOLDEN GLOBES
Tehran, November 1979. Militant students stormed the American embassy and held sixty Americans captive for a gruelling 444 days. But until now the CIA has never revealed the twist to the Iran Hostage Crisis: six Americans escaped.
The escape plot was run by Antonio Mendez, head of the CIA's extraction team and a master of disguise. Mendez came up with an idea so daring and potentially foolish that it seemed…
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