Fans pick 100 books like Inflamed

By Rupa Marya, Raj Patel,

Here are 100 books that Inflamed fans have personally recommended if you like Inflamed. 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 Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul

Camille Sapara Barton Author Of Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community

From my list on collective grief society and web of life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by altered states of consciousness and social change since childhood. Growing up in an esoteric home, I was immersed in a spiritual worldview, but this didn’t provide guidance on how to deal with grief or address social challenges. I sense that noticing and tending to the various forms of collective grief we are immersed in is a crucial place to begin. As a writer, artist, and somatic practitioner, I aim to create care networks to support liveable futures and world(s) where as many beings as possible can live with safety, dignity, and belonging. 

Camille's book list on collective grief society and web of life

Camille Sapara Barton Why did Camille love this book?

I love this book because it helped me to understand how death-phobic the Western world is and why grief, death, and mourning are currently taboo topics for many. I read the book shortly after the death of a family member, and it helped me to make sense of my feelings and give myself permission to be with them.

I found the book very hard to put down. With poetic wisdom, Stephen Jenkinson outlines how little space there is to consider what a good death is, especially in the context of Western medicine. One of the biggest messages I gained from this book is that we must embrace grief and death in order to embody our ethics and, ultimately, live and die well. 

By Stephen Jenkinson,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Die Wise as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Die Wise does not offer seven steps for coping with death. It does not suggest ways to make dying easier. It pours no honey to make the medicine go down. Instead, with lyrical prose, deep wisdom, and stories from his two decades of working with dying people and their families, Stephen Jenkinson places death at the center of the page and asks us to behold it in all its painful beauty. Die Wise teaches the skills of dying, skills that have to be learned in the course of living deeply and well. Die Wise is for those who will fail…


Book cover of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

Scarlet Tunkl Author Of When You Die You Will Not Be Scared to Die

From my list on being with and honoring death.

Why am I passionate about this?

My first memory is of my father telling me about the cosmos, the Big Bang, and how the sun would burn out one day, expanding so big it would swallow the Earth. This memory haunted my dreams and waking hours, instilling a fascination with the life and death cycles of everything. Now I’m an artist, writer, educator and somatic coach devoted to helping people talk about and honor the things western culture doesn’t create space for–big emotions, messy love and the gifts of dying.

Scarlet's book list on being with and honoring death

Scarlet Tunkl Why did Scarlet love this book?

I was raised by a family and culture that taught me nothing about grief, mourning, or honoring the great heartbreaks of aliveness. This book raised me and taught me about the importance of ritual and community tending to our grief.

It taught me that naming the pain of the world is an act of love and that helping others do the same is a responsibility we all carry. I trained with Francis Weller years after reading this book and was so affirmed by sharing space with a person who embodies what he teaches in a deep and embodied way. 

By Francis Weller,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Wild Edge of Sorrow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"It blew me away. I underlined things on nearly every page." —Anderson Cooper, All There Is

The Wild Edge of Sorrow offers hope and healing for a profoundly fractured world—and a pathway home to the brightness, pains, and gifts of being alive.

Introducing the 5 gates of grief, psychotherapist Francis Weller explores how we move through the waters of grief and loss in a culture so fundamentally detached from the needs of the soul.

• The first gate recognizes—and invites us to accept—the painful truth that everything we love, we will lose. With this acceptance comes beauty and responsibility—and an…


Book cover of Grievers: Black Dawn Series

Camille Sapara Barton Author Of Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community

From my list on collective grief society and web of life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by altered states of consciousness and social change since childhood. Growing up in an esoteric home, I was immersed in a spiritual worldview, but this didn’t provide guidance on how to deal with grief or address social challenges. I sense that noticing and tending to the various forms of collective grief we are immersed in is a crucial place to begin. As a writer, artist, and somatic practitioner, I aim to create care networks to support liveable futures and world(s) where as many beings as possible can live with safety, dignity, and belonging. 

Camille's book list on collective grief society and web of life

Camille Sapara Barton Why did Camille love this book?

I adore this book as it feels deeply woven with the legacy of Octavia Butler: gripping, socially engaged science fiction that is full of brilliant information about how to survive societal collapse.

I appreciate how adrienne shines a light on grief as it relates to the various social conditions that create hardship for folks. This systemic lack of care makes it hard for many folks to have their needs met in life, let alone have a dignified death. I gobbled this book up and was very sad to have finished it.  

By adrienne maree brown,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

★ "It’s a strong precedent that will leave readers eager for more."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Grievers is the story of a city so plagued by grief that it can no longer function.

Dune’s mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks—in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life—casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no one recovers. Dune must navigate poverty and the loss of her mother as Detroit’s hospitals, morgues, and graveyards begin to overflow. As the quarantined city slowly empties of life, she investigates what caused the plague, and what might end it, following…


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Book cover of From One Cell: A Journey into Life's Origins and the Future of Medicine

From One Cell By Ben Stanger,

Everybody knows that all animals—bats, bears, sharks, ponies, and people—start out as a single cell: the fertilized egg. But how does something no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence give rise to the remarkable complexity of each of these creatures?

FROM ONE CELL is a dive…

Book cover of Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief

Camille Sapara Barton Author Of Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community

From my list on collective grief society and web of life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by altered states of consciousness and social change since childhood. Growing up in an esoteric home, I was immersed in a spiritual worldview, but this didn’t provide guidance on how to deal with grief or address social challenges. I sense that noticing and tending to the various forms of collective grief we are immersed in is a crucial place to begin. As a writer, artist, and somatic practitioner, I aim to create care networks to support liveable futures and world(s) where as many beings as possible can live with safety, dignity, and belonging. 

Camille's book list on collective grief society and web of life

Camille Sapara Barton Why did Camille love this book?

As a social change nerd, this book hit the spot for me. It was a powerful read, giving me a glimpse into the lives of so many inspiring activists and organizers who have been incorporating grief work into their lives and movement spaces.

I felt a lot of inspiration reading this, and it helped me feel less alone. 

By Cindy Milstein (editor),

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

"This intimate, moving, and timely collection of essays points the way to a world in which the burden of grief is shared, and pain is reconfigured into a powerful force for social change and collective healing." —Astra Taylor, author The People's Platform

"A primary message here is that from tears comes the resolve for the struggle ahead." —Ron Jacobs, author of Daydream Sunset

"Rebellious Mourning uncovers the destruction of life that capitalist development leaves in its trail. But it is also witness to the power of grief as a catalyst to collective resistance." —Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the…


Book cover of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet

Laurie Laybourn Author Of Planet on Fire: A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown

From my list on to help us face up to the environmental crisis.

Why am I passionate about this?

I research, write and speak about the global environmental emergency and the policies and politics we need to adequately respond. Drawing on a decade of experience in academia, activism, and policymaking, my work explores the leadership needed to transition to more sustainable and equitable societies while contending with the growing destabilisation resulting from the worsening environmental crisis. I’ve worked at a range of leading policy research organisations and universities and have won awards for my work. I’ve got a BSc in physics and an MPhil in economies from the University of Oxford. 

Laurie's book list on to help us face up to the environmental crisis

Laurie Laybourn Why did Laurie love this book?

I was born at the end of the 1980s and the majority of greenhouse gas emissions have been released in my lifetime. That means the world’s emitted more since Seinfeld was first broadcast than in the previous 10 millennia of human history. But this isn’t just a story of the last few decades or of certain bad technologies that use fossil fuels. It’s a story going back centuries, to the emergence of global systems of profit-making that impelled people across the world to seek people and nature to exploit for money. This book has been invaluable in helping me understand that history and in seeing the environmental crisis foremost as a crisis of politics and of the great economic systems that dominate our world. 

By Rajeev Charles Patel, Jason W. Moore,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: these are the seven things that have made our world and will shape its future. In making these things cheap, modern commerce has transformed, governed, and devastated Earth. In A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore present a new approach to analyzing today's planetary emergencies. Bringing the latest ecological research together with histories of colonialism, indigenous struggles, slave revolts, and other rebellions and uprisings, Patel and Moore demonstrate that throughout history, crises have always prompted fresh strategies to make the world cheap and safe…


Book cover of Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization

Francis J. Teal Author Of The Poor and the Plutocrats

From my list on inequality and the disagreements over the cause.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have worked on the problems of poverty, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, for much of my professional life. I worked at the Centre for the Study of African Economies, which is part of the Department of Economics at Oxford University, from 1991 until my retirement in 2012. I continue to work both with the Centre and the Department as a Managing Editor of Oxford Economic Papers and Chief Editor of the Journal of African Economies. My recent book The Poor and the Plutocrats grew out of this background where I wanted to understand the links between very poor countries and those of much richer ones.

Francis' book list on inequality and the disagreements over the cause

Francis J. Teal Why did Francis love this book?

The approach of Milanovic is very different from that of Hickel in that it is intensive in the use of data which, he would argue, shows a much more nuanced picture of the success of the global economy in reducing poverty than argued by Hickel.

He begins by reproducing the ‘Elephant Chart’ from his earlier work. This is a chart showing the relative gain in real per capita income by global income level. The name ‘Elephant’ comes from the shape of the chart which shows the largest income gains to have occurred for those in the middle of the distribution and the lowest in the range of 70 to 80 in the percentile distribution and the highest for those at the very top. Those in the middle being the hump of the elephant those at the top being its trunk.

Milanovic argues that in many respects the years before the…

By Branko Milanovic,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Winner of the Bruno Kreisky Prize, Karl Renner Institut
A Financial Times Best Economics Book of the Year
An Economist Best Book of the Year
A Livemint Best Book of the Year

One of the world's leading economists of inequality, Branko Milanovic presents a bold new account of the dynamics that drive inequality on a global scale. Drawing on vast data sets and cutting-edge research, he explains the benign and malign forces that make inequality rise and fall within and among nations. He also reveals who has been helped the most by globalization, who has been held back, and what…


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Book cover of Traumatization and Its Aftermath: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Treating Trauma Disorders

Traumatization and Its Aftermath By Antonieta Contreras,

A fresh take on the difference between trauma and hardship in order to help accurately spot the difference and avoid over-generalizations.

The book integrates the latest findings in brain science, child development, psycho-social context, theory, and clinical experiences to make the case that trauma is much more than a cluster…

Book cover of The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World

Robert G. Parkinson Author Of Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier

From my list on the intersection of fiction and history.

Why am I passionate about this?

Fiction has a way of capturing people, places, and phenomena that often elude source-bound historians. As I say in my book, you feel the weight of all the terrible things Colonel Kurtz has done in central Africa far more by his whispering “the horror, the horror” than I, as a historian, could possibly convey by listing them out and analyzing them. That feel–especially what contingency feels like–is something historians should seek out and try to pull into their craft of writing. Getting used to and using fiction to help historians see and feel the past is a worthwhile endeavor. 

Robert's book list on the intersection of fiction and history

Robert G. Parkinson Why did Robert love this book?

I am not the only one struck by Conrad’s depiction of imperial encounter at the dawn of the 20th century. This book contextualizes the real people and places that Conrad adapted for his fiction writing. Jasanoff, a historian, traveled the globe on a container ship for months to try to understand this fascination with maritime travel, far-flung places, and how imperialism and modern capitalism shaped our world.

It is an unusual book (a great thing!) and a meditation on the origins of the contemporary world.

By Maya Jasanoff,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

CUNDILL PRIZE 2018 WINNER SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2018

'Enlightening, compassionate, superb' John le Carre

A visionary life and times of Joseph Conrad, and of our global world, from one of the best historians writing today.

Migration, terrorism, the tensions between global capitalism and nationalism, the promise and peril of a technological and communications revolution: these forces shaped the life and work of Joseph Conrad at the dawn of the twentieth century. In this brilliant new interpretation of one of the great voices in modern literature, Maya Jasanoff reveals Conrad as a prophet of globalization as…


Book cover of Dark Side of the Boom: The Excesses of the Art Market in the 21st Century

John Zarobell Author Of Art and the Global Economy

From my list on art and globalization.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of International Studies and a former museum curator. This combination provides me with a unique perspective not only on the inner workings of the art world, but the way that those practices map on to broader social, political, and economic transformations that occur as a result of globalization. This leads me, for example, to an assessment of how free-trade zones affect the art market. In past research, I have focused on colonialism and French art in the nineteenth century, so I am attuned to power imbalances between the center and the periphery and I am fascinated to see how these are shifting in the present.

John's book list on art and globalization

John Zarobell Why did John love this book?

Adam is one of the foremost reporters to cover the art market and has worked for the Financial Times and the Art Newspaper.
In her second book on the art market, she dives into the unsightly domain of the global art world, including speculation, forgery, art as an asset class, and freeports, the secret offshore warehouses where the rich stash their treasures tax-free. Her unique approach, focusing on classic categories such as supply, demand, and price among others brings a refreshing approach to the changing nature of the art market.

By Georgina Adam,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dark Side of the Boom as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book scrutinizes the excesses and extravagances that the 21st-century explosion of the contemporary art market brought in its wake. The buying of art as an investment, temptations to forgery and fraud, tax evasion, money laundering and pressure to produce more and more art all form part of this story, as do the upheavals in auction houses and the impact of the enhanced use of financial instruments on art transactions. Drawing on a series of tenaciously wrought interviews with artists, collectors, lawyers, bankers and convicted artist forgers, the author charts the voracious commodification of artists and art objects, and art's…


Book cover of The Meaning of the 21st Century: a Vital Blueprint for Ensuring Our Future

Rick Szostak Author Of Making Sense of the Future

From my list on the future.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have read the future studies literature for decades. A few years ago an alumnus suggested that my university should create a course about the future. My dean encouraged me to look into it. On reading Bishop and Hines, Teaching About the Future, I was struck by the maturity of the field, the strength of their program that they describe, and the fact that they bemoan the lack of a book that could introduce newcomers to the field. I decided that I could write such a book, combining the latest research in the field with my own understandings of interdisciplinarity, world history, economics, and political activism.

Rick's book list on the future

Rick Szostak Why did Rick love this book?

This book provides a very broad survey of trends that are likely to affect our collective future and actions that can be taken to achieve desirable ends.

He is especially good in his coverage of technological developments. Though technology is changing very rapidly, I still found the book to be full of great insights into what trends to watch and what to do about them

By James E Martin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Meaning of the 21st Century as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

James Martin, one of the world's most widely respected authorities on the impact of technology on society, argues that we are living at a turning point in human history. 'We are travelling at breakneck speed into an era of extremes - extremes of wealth and poverty, extremes in technology, extremes in globalization. If we are to survive, we must learn how to manage them all.' Although we face huge challenges and conflicts, Martin argues that it is in the scientific breakthroughs of the new century that we will find new hope. In a clear, penetrating and insightful style he addresses…


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Book cover of Who Will Take Care of Me When I'm Old?: Plan Now to Safeguard Your Health and Happiness in Old Age

Who Will Take Care of Me When I'm Old? By Joy Loverde,

Everything you need to know to plan for your own safe, financially secure, healthy, and happy old age.

For those who have no support system in place, the thought of aging without help can be a frightening, isolating prospect. Whether you have friends and family ready and able to help…

Book cover of The Global Art World: Audiences, Markets, and Museums

John Zarobell Author Of Art and the Global Economy

From my list on art and globalization.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of International Studies and a former museum curator. This combination provides me with a unique perspective not only on the inner workings of the art world, but the way that those practices map on to broader social, political, and economic transformations that occur as a result of globalization. This leads me, for example, to an assessment of how free-trade zones affect the art market. In past research, I have focused on colonialism and French art in the nineteenth century, so I am attuned to power imbalances between the center and the periphery and I am fascinated to see how these are shifting in the present.

John's book list on art and globalization

John Zarobell Why did John love this book?

This book was the first to bring together a group of international artists, curators, and scholars to discuss and engage the changing nature of the art world, as a result of globalization.

The project was launched at the Center for Media and Art (ZKM) in Karlsrühe, Germany in 2006 with a series of conferences that turned into a series of books over time and an exhibition in 2013.

No other book considers so many new manifestations of the museum in the twenty-first century, illuminating new opportunities for the reader to explore distant lands vicariously and also to discover how many different ways institutions are being developed in cities around the world.

By Hans Belting (editor), Andrea Buddensieg (editor),

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

This is the second publication from the ongoing research series, Global Art and the Museum (GAM), which was initiated in 2001 by German art historian Hans Belting and artist, writer and curator Peter Weibel at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. The last 20 years have seen a rapid globalization of the art world, resulting in geographic decentralization and a shift away from a primarily Western perspective. GAM's aim is to analyze the effect of these changes on the art market, museums and art criticism. This volume comprises a collection of essays by experts--such as Claude…


Book cover of Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul
Book cover of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
Book cover of Grievers: Black Dawn Series

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