Fans pick 100 books like Oral Tradition as History

By Jan Vansina,

Here are 100 books that Oral Tradition as History fans have personally recommended if you like Oral Tradition as History. 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 Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error

T.C. Kuhn Author Of The Artist of Aveyron

From my list on the amazing history of the south of France.

Why am I passionate about this?

While using the city of Albi in southern France as a base for visiting some cave art locations I became fascinated with the history of the early Christians of the region and the brutal Cathar Crusade which happened there. I was also surprised to learn this was the home of Toulouse Lautrec and other later artists. As an archaeologist studying cave art, I became caught up in the long and important history of this one small area. The idea for a story intertwining different religious movements and art over thousands of years quickly emerged. I couldn’t resist this unique opportunity to reveal a piece of the past from a perspective I hadn't considered before.  

T.C.'s book list on the amazing history of the south of France

T.C. Kuhn Why did T.C. love this book?

It is virtually impossible to write or even investigate medieval southern France, especially the famous Cathar Period without delving into this classic work.

Still available in different translations, Le Roy Ladurie takes us into the life of a 14th-century French mountain village and its people in a way no one else has ever attempted. Based upon meticulous church records of contemporary individual interviews and interrogations with alleged heretics in one small village by Church Inquisitors, the author gives us a look into the lives of common people of that time that has never been equaled.

I found myself returning to this small book time and again in creating my own setting and characters (including borrowing authentic names at times) for a near-contemporary portion of the story I wanted to build within the larger framework of time and place I was focused upon.

The reader gets a true sense of the…

By Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Barbara Bray (translator),

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

"Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie has had a success which few historians experience and which is usually reserved for the winner of the Prix Goncourt...Montaillou, which is the reconstruction of the social life of a medieval village, has been acclaimed by the experts as a masterpiece of ethnographic history and by the public as a sensational revelation of the thoughts, feelings, and activities of the ordinary people of the past."―Times Literary Supplement.

With a new introduction by author Le Roy Ladurie, this special edition offers a fascinating history of a fourteenth-century village, Montaillou, in the mountainous region of southern France, almost…


Book cover of Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: Orality, Memory and the Transmission of Culture

Patrick Nunn Author Of The Edge of Memory: Ancient Stories, Oral Tradition and the Post-Glacial World

From my list on ancient oral traditions.

Why am I passionate about this?

Becoming immersed in oral cultures was a massive wake-up call for me! Taught to privilege the written over the spoken word, as most literate people are, it took me years of living in the Pacific Islands, travelling regularly to their remoter parts, to appreciate that people who could neither read nor write could retain huge amounts of information in their heads – and explain it effortlessly. We undervalue orality because we are literate, but that is an irrational prejudice. And as I have discovered from encounters with oral traditions throughout Australia and the Pacific, India, and northwest Europe, not only are oral traditions extensive but may be thousands of years old.

Patrick's book list on ancient oral traditions

Patrick Nunn Why did Patrick love this book?

I had been immersed in oral cultures for more than two decades when I read this book by Lynne Kelly and it was like a curtain being lifted for me. Suddenly I found affirmation that oral traditions indeed had meaning and purpose but – more than this – that they were supplemented in this by art, by dance and performance, by poetry and music. Lynne’s clever and readable book has had a lasting impact on me and the research questions I endeavor to answer. Everyone interested in human pasts should read it.

By Lynne Kelly,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this book, Lynne Kelly explores the role of formal knowledge systems in small-scale oral cultures in both historic and archaeological contexts. In the first part, she examines knowledge systems within historically recorded oral cultures, showing how the link between power and the control of knowledge is established. Analyzing the material mnemonic devices used by documented oral cultures, she demonstrates how early societies maintained a vast corpus of pragmatic information concerning animal behavior, plant properties, navigation, astronomy, genealogies, laws and trade agreements, among other matters. In the second part Kelly turns to the archaeological record of three sites, Chaco Canyon,…


Book cover of When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth

Patrick Nunn Author Of The Edge of Memory: Ancient Stories, Oral Tradition and the Post-Glacial World

From my list on ancient oral traditions.

Why am I passionate about this?

Becoming immersed in oral cultures was a massive wake-up call for me! Taught to privilege the written over the spoken word, as most literate people are, it took me years of living in the Pacific Islands, travelling regularly to their remoter parts, to appreciate that people who could neither read nor write could retain huge amounts of information in their heads – and explain it effortlessly. We undervalue orality because we are literate, but that is an irrational prejudice. And as I have discovered from encounters with oral traditions throughout Australia and the Pacific, India, and northwest Europe, not only are oral traditions extensive but may be thousands of years old.

Patrick's book list on ancient oral traditions

Patrick Nunn Why did Patrick love this book?

When I first read this book, not only was I struck by its central theme that ‘myths’ have meaning but also by the fact that it is our problem that we cannot today recognize myths for what they once were. All oral traditions evolve through time, sometimes over thousands of years and across hundreds of generations of retelling, but if their core is sufficiently memorable, then it can remain recognizable. It is up to us to unpack the stories we hear today, to learn how they changed through time, and try to see whether there is an empirical core in their hearts. This book is a must for anyone interested in learning more about the meaning of ‘myth’ rather than romanticizing it.

By Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Paul T. Barber,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked When They Severed Earth from Sky as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Why were Prometheus and Loki envisioned as chained to rocks? What was the Golden Calf? Why are mirrors believed to carry bad luck? How could anyone think that mortals like Perseus, Beowulf, and St. George actually fought dragons, since dragons don't exist? Strange though they sound, however, these "myths" did not begin as fiction. This absorbing book shows that myths originally transmitted real information about real events and observations, preserving the information sometimes for millennia within nonliterate societies. Geologists' interpretations of how a volcanic cataclysm long ago created Oregon's Crater Lake, for example, is echoed point for point in the…


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Book cover of I Am Taurus

I Am Taurus By Stephen Palmer,

The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.

Each of the sections is written from…

Book cover of Hawaiian Mythology

Patrick Nunn Author Of The Edge of Memory: Ancient Stories, Oral Tradition and the Post-Glacial World

From my list on ancient oral traditions.

Why am I passionate about this?

Becoming immersed in oral cultures was a massive wake-up call for me! Taught to privilege the written over the spoken word, as most literate people are, it took me years of living in the Pacific Islands, travelling regularly to their remoter parts, to appreciate that people who could neither read nor write could retain huge amounts of information in their heads – and explain it effortlessly. We undervalue orality because we are literate, but that is an irrational prejudice. And as I have discovered from encounters with oral traditions throughout Australia and the Pacific, India, and northwest Europe, not only are oral traditions extensive but may be thousands of years old.

Patrick's book list on ancient oral traditions

Patrick Nunn Why did Patrick love this book?

First published in 1940, Hawaiian Mythology is an astonishingly comprehensive compilation of native Hawaiian stories and beliefs that, had it not been for the systematic – even dogged – efforts of people like Martha Beckwith may have never survived to today. This is a book to dip into, especially if you find yourself in Polynesia. The stories are factual, often unembellished, which allows you a glimpse into the soul of Pacific peoples. This book also explores the connections between (remote) Hawaii and other island groups in the western Pacific whence its people came, bearing oral memories that seeded the geography of Hawaii and directed the nature of its human occupation, probably hundreds of years before Europeans even knew the Pacific Ocean existed.

By Martha Warren Beckwith,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Ku and Hina―man and woman―were the great ancestral gods of heaven and earth for the ancient Hawaiians. They were life's fruitfulness and all the generations of mankind, both those who are to come and those already born.

The Hawaiian gods were like great chiefs from far lands who visited among the people, entering their daily lives sometimes as humans or animals, sometimes taking residence in a stone or wooden idol. As years passed, the families of gods grew and included the trickster Maui, who snared the sun, and fiery Pele of the volcano.

Ancient Hawaiians lived by the animistic philosophy…


Book cover of A Treasury of African Folklore

Gail Nyoka Author Of Voices of the Ancestors: Stories & Lore From Ghana’s Volta Region

From my list on folktales from Africa.

Why am I passionate about this?

Once upon a time, I didn’t know any stories from Africa. I found one, and it stirred me to my core. I found others and read them to my children. These were oral stories that had been trapped between the covers of books. One day, I discovered the oral tradition – stories told as they were originally heard. They had been liberated from the page and flew into my heart. A storyteller was born in me. I went on my own journey to collect stories in Ghana. I now tell stories from traditions around the world.

Gail's book list on folktales from Africa

Gail Nyoka Why did Gail love this book?

When it comes to oral literature from the African continent, I haven’t seen another collection that matches this in-depth and breadth. Here you will find a fuller version of one of the Soninke epics discussed in the book by Clyde W. Ford. Here are the stories of the Akan, and many other African peoples. I particularly enjoyed the sayings and humorous anecdotes.

By Harold Courlander,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Treasury of African Folklore as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A large, distinctive collection of tales, traditions, lore, legends, folk wisdom, and poetry captures the oral heritage of the peoples of Africa, including the Hause, Kanuri, Ashanti, Mbundu, Zulu, Hottentot, and Mensa tribes. Reprint. PW. IP.


Book cover of A Killing in the Sun

Wole Talabi Author Of Incomplete Solutions

From my list on collections of African speculative fiction stories.

Why am I passionate about this?

Novels are great. I’ve written one myself. I have also written many short stories for major science fiction and fantasy publishing venues—Asimov’s, F&SF, Analog, Lightspeed, etc. But there is something special about single-author short story collections. They are like tasting platters. They reveal running themes and can be a unique way to explore places—through the imaginations of its authors. For example, many of my stories are set in or feature characters from Nigeria. I hope you enjoy the books on this list and that they show you something new about Africa and what (some) African authors dream about. 

Wole's book list on collections of African speculative fiction stories

Wole Talabi Why did Wole love this book?

This collection by one of Uganda’s premier speculative fiction writer/directors features strange, wonderful worlds and deeply fascinating characters with compelling stories uncompromisingly but accessibly rooted in African perspectives and mythologies and I’ve recommended it often. Sometimes leaning literary, other times heavily genre, Dilman has a gift for layering the fantastic on top of the real. The bizarre over the mundane. The prose is direct and clear, and the descriptions are lush. Every story here makes great use of East African culture, mythology, folklore, politics, and everyday life to tell great stories which anyone can enjoy.

By Dilman Dila,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Killing in the Sun as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

‘A Killing in the Sun’ is a collection of speculative fiction from Africa. It draws from the rich oral culture of the author’s childhood, to tell a wide variety of stories. Some of the stories are set in a futuristic Africa, where technology has transformed everyday life and a dark force rules. Others are set in the present day, with refugee aliens from outer space, ghosts haunting brides and grooms, evil scientists stalking villages, and greedy corporations creating apocalypses. There are murder mysteries, tales of reincarnation and of the walking dead, and alternative worlds whose themes any reader will identify…


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Book cover of Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco that Pushed America and its World to the Brink

Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco that Pushed America and its World to the Brink By Ethan Chorin,

Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…

Book cover of The Heart of the Matter

Norrin M. Ripsman Author Of The Oracle of Spring Garden Road

From my list on novels that nail the endings.

Why am I passionate about this?

Too often, I find that novelists force the endings of their books in ways that aren’t true to their characters, the stories, or their settings. Often, they do so to provide the Hollywood ending that many readers crave. That always leaves me cold. I love novels whose characters are complex, human, and believable and interact with their setting and the story in ways that do not stretch credulity. This is how I try to approach my own writing and was foremost in my mind as I set out to write my own book.

Norrin's book list on novels that nail the endings

Norrin M. Ripsman Why did Norrin love this book?

I couldn’t make a list like this without including Graham Greene. His introspective art of writing has shaped my own approach to fiction. This book is a brilliant portrait of Scobie, a security officer in West Africa during World War II.

A deeply religious Catholic with simple tastes, Scobie struggles with guilt toward all in his melancholy orbit: his wife Louise, whose hopes to climb the social ladder have been dashed by Scobie’s simplicity and integrity; his mistress Helen; his faithful servant Ali.

The book ends beautifully, with Scobie making the only choice consistent with his quirky beliefs and sensitivities. I could easily have added his The Power and the Glory, but I didn’t want to make this a Graham Greene list.

By Graham Greene,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

“Wilson sat on the balcony of the Bedford Hotel with his bald pink knees thrust against the ironwork..."
 
Graham Greene's masterpiece, The Heart of the Matter, tells the story of a good man enmeshed in love, intrigue, and evil in a West African coastal town. Scobie is bound by strict integrity to his role as assistant police commissioner and by severe responsibility to his wife, Louise, for whom he cares with a fatal pity.
 
When Scobie falls in love with the young widow Helen, he finds vital passion again yielding to pity, integrity giving way to deceit and dishonor—a vortex…


Book cover of The Challenge for Africa

Roger RB Leakey Author Of Living with the Trees of Life: A Practical Guide to Rebooting the Planet through Tropical Agriculture and Putting Farmers First

From my list on making a healthier, fairer, and better planet.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a research scientist who has worked on the interface of many biological, environmental, social, and economic disciplines seeking more sustainable and yet productive forms of agriculture in the tropics and subtropics. With numerous colleagues, I've tried to find ways to right many of the wrongs that have affected the critical food and non-food needs of the world’s poorest and marginalized farmers. This also has the potential to heal much of the environmental degradation and social deprivation in our troubled and dysfunctional world. Along the way, I've had an unusual and privileged research career travelling in remote corners of the world and meeting the people most in need of help from international decision makers.

Roger's book list on making a healthier, fairer, and better planet

Roger RB Leakey Why did Roger love this book?

Wangari Maathai was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her environmental activism with the Women’s Green Belt Movement.

Africa perhaps has more humanitarian, environmental, and political challenges than any other continent. Many of these arise from its colonial history and this book eloquently and forcefully presents the way this has hindered African development.

It then calls on Africans to develop and implement their own solutions rather than to have them imposed by outsiders who don’t understand the context of the continent.

By Wangari Maathai,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

In this urgent yet optimistic new work, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Wangari Maathai provides a unique perspective on the fate of Africa. Informed by her three decades as an environmental activist and campaigner for democracy, The Challenge for Africa celebrates the enduring potential of the human spirit, and reminds us that change is always possible.


Book cover of Drinking from Graveyard Wells: Stories

Wole Talabi Author Of Convergence Problems

From my list on single-author collections of African speculative fiction.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an engineer, writer, and editor. And I love short stories. I love writing them and reading them too. I’ve written for major science fiction and fantasy magazines, and my stories have even been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. But when short stories are put together in a single author collection, they can truly come alive, revealing running themes and ideas explored through the imagination of the author. My own collections Incomplete Solutions and Convergence Problems do just this – exploring potential futures for Africa. I previously shared five of the best single-author collections of African speculative fiction and now, here are five more.

Wole's book list on single-author collections of African speculative fiction

Wole Talabi Why did Wole love this book?

As a Zimbabwean sarungano, Ndlovu is an expert storyteller, and that skill truly shows in this collection of fourteen stories chronicling the strangeness and surrealism of the lives of African women at home and abroad.

Exploring everything from the legacy of colonization to cultural appropriation and from literalized metaphors to exploring the nature of time in African thought, this is a collection that is clever and funny and emotionally astute, rendered in poetic and clear prose.

As a collection, the stories reinforce each other making this an experience to read. I highly recommend it.

By Yvette Lisa Ndlovu,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Drinking from Graveyard Wells as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Even in death, who has ownership over Black women's bodies?"

Questions like this sit between the lines of this stunning collection of stories that engage the nuance of African women's histories. Their history is not just one thing, there is heartbreak and pain, and joy, and flying and magic, so much magic. An avenging spirit takes on the patriarchy from beyond the grave.

An immigrant woman undergoes a naturalization ceremony in an imagined American state that demands that immigrants pay a toll of the thing they love the most to be allowed to stay. A first-generation Zimbabwean-American woman haunted by…


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Book cover of Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS

Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS By Amy Carney,

When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…

Book cover of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Marc Epprecht Author Of Hungochani: The History of a Dissident Sexuality in Southern Africa

From my list on social justice in Africa.

Why am I passionate about this?

I first travelled to Zimbabwe in 1984, eager both to “build scientific socialism” but also to answer two big questions. How can people proclaim rage at certain injustices yet at the same time perpetuate them against certain other people? And, could I learn to be a better (more empathetic) man than my upbringing inclined me towards? Years of teaching in the rural areas, and then becoming a father taught me “yes” to the second question but for the first, I needed to continue to pursue that knowledge with colleagues, students, mentors, friends and family. Today, my big question is, how can we push together to get these monsters of capitalism, patriarchy, homophobia, racism, and ecocide off our backs?

Marc's book list on social justice in Africa

Marc Epprecht Why did Marc love this book?

The canon of anti-colonial, anti-racism writing from and about Africa includes many authors whose passion and insights are sometimes muddied by turgid or masculinist prose. For me, Rodney stands out – and stands the test of time – by the way he so masterfully weaves history into a compelling narrative that utterly demolishes the lies and conceits about supposed Western benevolence toward the continent. Scales fell from my eyes the first time (of many) I read this book. And yes, Rodney is almost as androcentric in his language, sources, and arguments as was the norm in those days. But his acknowledgment of the dignity of African women is implicit, and his discussion of the regressive elements of the colonial economy and education for African women and girls presaged a field of scholarly enquiry and activism that still intrigues me.

By Walter Rodney,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked How Europe Underdeveloped Africa as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The classic work of political, economic, and historical analysis, powerfully introduced by Angela Davis In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance…


Book cover of Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error
Book cover of Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: Orality, Memory and the Transmission of Culture
Book cover of When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth

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