Here are 100 books that In the Country of Last Things fans have personally recommended if you like
In the Country of Last Things.
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I’ve been a soldier, designer, educator, farmer, and remain a philosopher and writer. I defy the classification of being either practical or theoretic. I have worked on environmental issues for over thirty years, including urban, post-conflict, and climate change projects in Australia, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. I have written over twenty books on design, cities, conflict, and politics. I am driven to understand the complexity of the world in which I live and, thereafter, act based on the knowledge gained–my book list reflects this passion for knowledge, and my life evidences a commitment to act.
Working between cultures, as I do, I have been reading the Sinologist François Jullien for many years. I like how he traces the passage of an idea across cultures as they reveal tensions between the same and the different. The question Jullien poses with this book is, “Are universal values possible,” especially between the East and the West?
Although a common concept may exist, this does not mean a common meaning does. In my experience, we all communicate constantly, oscillating between understanding and misunderstanding, which is more so when cultural differences occur.
The once-read, never forgotten Wittgenstein statement: ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,’ ever resonates–I believe language mediates all sensory experience, but often inadequately.
Francois Jullien, the leading philosopher and specialist in Chinese thought, has always aimed at building on inter-cultural relations between China and the West. In this new book he focuses on the following questions: Do universal values exist? Is dialogue between cultures possible?
To answer these questions, he retraces the history of the concept of the universal from its invention as an aspect of Roman citizenship, through its neutralization in the Christian idea of salvation, to its present day manifestations. This raises the question of whether the search for the universal is a uniquely Western preoccupation: do other cultures, like China,…
I’ve been a soldier, designer, educator, farmer, and remain a philosopher and writer. I defy the classification of being either practical or theoretic. I have worked on environmental issues for over thirty years, including urban, post-conflict, and climate change projects in Australia, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. I have written over twenty books on design, cities, conflict, and politics. I am driven to understand the complexity of the world in which I live and, thereafter, act based on the knowledge gained–my book list reflects this passion for knowledge, and my life evidences a commitment to act.
In what I do and how I feel, I cannot avoid confronting the times we all live, called the “end times.” What they name is the end of an epoch of total planetary domination by Homo sapiens.
A moment of nemesis has arrived. What has been discovered, if unevenly, is that our collective world-making has revealed itself to be an unmaking. The history and the future of climate change, literally and metaphorically, stand for this moment.
The Brazilian anthropologists Deborah and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro powerfully capture not just the causes of this planetary crisis but, in my view, present ways of thinking and working toward affirmative futures.
The end of the world is a seemingly interminable topic D at least, of course, until it happens. Environmental catastrophe and planetary apocalypse are subjects of enduring fascination and, as ethnographic studies show, human cultures have approached them in very different ways. Indeed, in the face of the growing perception of the dire effects of global warming, some of these visions have been given a new lease on life. Information and analyses concerning the human causes and the catastrophic consequences of the planetary 'crisis' have been accumulating at an ever-increasing rate, mobilising popular opinion as well as academic reflection.
I’ve been a soldier, designer, educator, farmer, and remain a philosopher and writer. I defy the classification of being either practical or theoretic. I have worked on environmental issues for over thirty years, including urban, post-conflict, and climate change projects in Australia, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. I have written over twenty books on design, cities, conflict, and politics. I am driven to understand the complexity of the world in which I live and, thereafter, act based on the knowledge gained–my book list reflects this passion for knowledge, and my life evidences a commitment to act.
Two important messages underscoring this fascinating anarchist history of Southeast Asia's uplands are coming from the past and arriving from an uncertain future. The first message began 12,000 years ago when human settlements were established.
Slowly, friction emerged between lowlands people, who settled and started to acquire property, and nomadic people of the highlands. The more settlements developed, the more nomads were deemed a threat and destroyed. These conflicts are elemental to the history of war.
The current data on climate impacts I’ve read indicate that a significant percentage of the global population will be displaced in the coming decades. By becoming nomadic, they will again be deemed a threat to urban dwellers–hence the message: there’s another danger of war to avoid!
From the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott, the compelling tale of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed the vast tide of state-making to live at arm's length from any organized state society
For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them-slavery, conscription, taxes, corvee labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an "anarchist history," is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates…
I’ve been a soldier, designer, educator, farmer, and remain a philosopher and writer. I defy the classification of being either practical or theoretic. I have worked on environmental issues for over thirty years, including urban, post-conflict, and climate change projects in Australia, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. I have written over twenty books on design, cities, conflict, and politics. I am driven to understand the complexity of the world in which I live and, thereafter, act based on the knowledge gained–my book list reflects this passion for knowledge, and my life evidences a commitment to act.
For me, Bernard Stiegler was one of the most influential thinkers of technology of the modern age. I like books that bring my own thinking into question. His book does this for me by providing an interesting and unfamiliar way of understanding the relation between technology and consumerism.
He describes consumerism as damaging our psychic sphere and destroying our desires–replacing them with ones formed and met by marketed commodities. What I found insightful was how he showed “reason” being transformed by philosophy into an object of faith.
The result: reason now travels with the unreason of an unchecked rationalization of power of technological creation, but with little sense of the consequences, over time, of what has been created (think AI!).
In 1944 Horkheimer and Adorno warned that industrial society turns reason into rationalization, and Polanyi warned of the dangers of the self-regulating market, but today, argues Stiegler, this regression of reason has led to societies dominated by unreason, stupidity and madness. However, philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century abandoned the critique of political economy, and poststructuralism left its heirs helpless and disarmed in face of the reign of stupidity and an economic crisis of global proportions.
New theories and concepts are required today to think through these issues. The thinkers of poststructuralism Lyotard, Deleuze, Derrida must be…
My books blend two of my lifelong passions—post-Roman British history, and landscape archaeology. I fell in love with the first somewhere in my late teens, through the not-unusual route of Arthurian legend, and with the latter the first time I saw the British tv seriesTime Team. Over the last nearly-fifty years, I’ve continued to read and study, both formally and informally, in both areas. My books are an extension and expression of both those interests, but I am too much of a ‘what if?’ person to limit myself to true historical fiction. You’ll also find a few hints of two of my other interests, birdwatching and walking, dropped into the books here and there.
While generally considered science fiction, this one of Tepper’s books is centred on a society where men and women live separately – and why, and the effects of such a divided society on the lives of men and women. Although the divided society in my book owes more to Sparta than Tepper’s book, she gave me the idea to examine the consequences of such a society in my pseudo-post-Roman world.
THE GATE TO WOMEN'S COUNTRY tells of a society that exists three hundred years after our own has nearly destroyed itself. Now, male warriors are separated from women at an early age and live in garrisons plotting futilely for the battles which must never be fought again. Inside the women's towns, education, arts and science flourish. But for some like Stavia, there is more to see. Her sojourn with the man she is forbidden to love brings into sharp focus the contradictions that define their lives.
And when tragedy strikes, Stavia is faced with a decision she never thought she…
I first fell into fantasy through the pages of Narnia. I loved the fantastic, the possibility, the idea that there was so much more than just what was accepted by all the “normal” people. I was always an oddity in school, and I felt far more at home in the books that swept me away, as if there, even amidst the danger, I could be myself. The books on my list are books that built me up and challenged me to be true to live for what is right and noble.
I enjoyed this series because it was a well-written, fast-paced, interesting, clean story that I was happy to share with my children (especially my daughters). Each of the four books follows the perspective of one of the four main characters, and all of these girls are strong, loyal, and have a clear sense of right and wrong. They are not ashamed to be “good,” which is a refreshing find in dystopian futures!
In a terrifying future world, four girls must depend on each other if they want to survive.Louisa is nervous about being sent away to a boarding school -- but she’s excited, too. And she has her best friend, Maddie, to keep her company. The girls have to pretend to be twin sisters, which Louisa thinks just adds to the adventure!Country Manor School isn’t all excitement, though. Louisa isn’t sure how she feels about her new roommates: athletic but snobby Rosie and everything’s-a-conspiracy Evelyn. Even Maddie seems different away from home, quiet and worried all the time. Still, Louisa loves CMS…
I’ve always been curious about how stories shape how we see the world. As a child, I noticed there were countless conflicting stories explaining how things worked. But which stories were the real ones? Which were true? At university, I studied the stories we tell ourselves about how the world will end. And as we live in times that can feel quite apocalyptic, I’m particularly fascinated by the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what the future holds. If society dissolved around us, what stories would we tell ourselves to keep going? Are we telling those stories now?
I found this book realistic in a really frightening way. The entire societal structure of the world depends on the stories we humans tell ourselves about ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and I think the book plays with this very cleverly.
It has a very tender depiction of what happens to us and our stories when we’re all alone, and I still think about the way generational guilt is woven through the story.
It was one of those books where I kept walking up to my wife to say, “Can I read you something?” and, “Listen to this…” because the ideas are so big, but the language is so clipped and to the point.
In this taut, dystopian tale, an island nation ravaged by the Change has built an enormous concrete barrier around its coastline-the Wall. Joseph Kavanagh, a new Defender, has one task: to protect his section of the Wall from the Others, the desperate souls trapped amid the rising seas outside. A blend of the most compelling issues of our time-climate change, increasing fear, widening divisions-The Wall is a suspenseful story of love, trust, and survival.
I am, first and foremost, a reader. I started writing because my debut novel, releasing September 7, wouldn’t leave me alone. Dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction tends to have that impact on me as a reader, so I wanted to create that same impact in other readers. Lately, my TBR has been dominated by indie-authored books, given my own decision to pursue indie publishing. I love the dystopian classics—especially Alduous Huxley, Kurt Vonnegut, and George Orwell- and I read the latest traditionally published dystopian books. But I find indie authors like the ones I’ve featured here tell compelling stories about important topics that perhaps many traditional publishers won’t publish.
Emma Ellis spins the most horrifying yet hope-filled stories of dystopian societies. In book one of the Eyes Forward series, the world is in a population crisis. Resources are heavily rationed, and the governments of the world are actively taking steps to curb population growth.
That’s when Mae gets pregnant and learns she must find a “life donor”—someone who agrees to die so that the baby may live—or abort her unborn child. I appreciated how Ellis threaded the horror of a forced abortion into a gripping tale of human resilience in the face of overwhelming odds.
The plot twists and turns kept me on the edge of my seat, yet the message of the book made me think about how we steward our natural resources. This book is perfect for Octavia Butler, 1984, and Brave New World fans.
★★★★★ Utterly terrifying, addictive and yet so full of love. -Amazon review
★★★★★ Great writing and a truly gripping story. -Amazon review
★★★★★ Dark, disturbing and deeply compelling. -Amazon review
Mae finds herself pregnant in a world where the global population has hit twenty billion, and governments decree that no child may be born without a life being sacrificed in return.
With growing unrest and violence towards pregnant women, Mae must navigate a hostile world to secure a future for her unborn child — no matter the cost. When the stakes are so high, how far would you go to…
I have always loved fictional works that explore deep truths of humanity and existence. As a teen struggling to understand my purpose and beliefs, I grew fond of dystopian books with subtle, hope-filled messages pointing to God as our salvation amid chaos. I loved the genre so much that I began writing a Christian dystopian novel of my own and self-published it at 19, weaving pieces of my testimony throughout the main character's inner journey. For me, a book is only as good as its characters, no matter how gripping the plot is. So, the books on this list contain some of the genre's most authentic, intricately written souls.
As a fast-paced sci-fi dystopian book about the end times, Unbound took me by surprise. The main character is amusingly real in his unbelief in God and skepticism about the prophecies from the book of Revelation, telling things as they are and unable to comprehend the intense visions he experiences.
The storyline is compelling, and I could not help but continually compare it to the biblical prophesies because they were so eerily parallel and realistically portrayed. This book had my heart racing and made me want to read the next in the series as soon as I finished it.
"The Da Vinci Code meets Hunger Games meets Left Behind...An imagining epic." Hugh Hewitt, New York Times Bestseller
Elijah Goldsmith has nightmares he needs to ignore. Why would a rich kid from Manhattan dream three straight nights about a dragon and the destruction of St. Peter's Basilica? He's never even been to Rome.
It's bad timing, too. He's graduating soon and applying to be a spy in the International Security Agency. That's where he meets Naomi. She's the kind of girl who makes boys like Elijah want to share their secrets. Were they brought together to learn what his secrets…
I got interested in the theme of a post-apocalyptic, dystopian world after hearing years of doomsday predictions, most of which never came true or were far from catastrophic. I wondered what some real threats to our way of life are and in 2015, started writing a novel, Defenders of Holt, about what a dystopian future might look like. After that book, I wanted to write about the events that led up to that dystopian world and settled on a coronal mass ejection (CME) as the apocalyptic event in the Teenage Survivalist series. I did many hours of research to back up my stories to make them as realistic as possible.
This book describes life after an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the United States and the collapse of our civilization and even our humanity, as the necessity of a ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality takes over. The story follows Sean and Maria as they use their wits, skills, faith, and personal values to navigate the post-apocalyptic world. There are quite a few brand-name references to specific survival gear, and I felt the book could be considered a manual for various components of preparedness, such as stockpiling, getting home, bugging out, tactical preparations, joining with others for safety, etc. I highly recommend this book for those who enjoy a good survival story as well as those who are interested in preparing for any future apocalypse or even a smaller, shorter-lived catastrophe.
EMP: Equipping Modern Patriots is a harrowing story of survival following the destruction of the electric grid and nearly every electronic device in the country. Can you imagine a world with no phones, no TV, no internet, and no way to access your bank account? Without the electric grid, there would be no lights, no heating or air conditioning in your house, no public water, and the sewer would likely back up into your home. Without modern vehicles or interstate trucking, the supermarkets would quickly run out of food and supplies. Unprepared, the government would be helpless to feed the…
