Love Resurrection? Readers share 100 books like Resurrection...

By Leo Tolstoy, Louise Maude (translator), Keith Carabine (editor)

Here are 100 books that Resurrection fans have personally recommended if you like Resurrection. 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 Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

Trista Harris Author Of Future Good: How to Use Futurism to Save the World

From my list on dreamers who want to shape the future.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been obsessed with making the future a better place since I was 8 years old and spent my evenings hanging out in a local community center. I realized that things got better when people who cared showed up for each other. I am now a philanthropic futurist and have spent my career dedicated to helping visionary leaders build a more beautiful and equitable future. All of the books on this list have inspired me, and I hope they inspire you, too. If we all do our small part, we can ensure we have a Star Trek future and not a Hunger Games future.

Trista's book list on dreamers who want to shape the future

Trista Harris Why did Trista love this book?

I absolutely loved this book. It taught me how to follow the cues of nature to solve complex problems, a lesson I had never considered before. Inspired by Octavia Butler, it is a blend of radical self-help and practical guidance for shaping the future, both personally and collectively.

I found the emphasis on change and adaptability particularly powerful. Rather than resisting the world’s constant flux, it encouraged me to embrace it, map the patterns around me, and use them to influence outcomes. This approach felt deeply grounded in both science and spirituality, making it all the more impactful.

Emergent Strategy has transformed the way I think about problem-solving, community-building, and my role (and responsibility) in shaping the future.

By Adrienne Maree Brown,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked Emergent Strategy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the tradition of Octavia Butler, radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want.

Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This…


Book cover of The Three Ecologies

Charlie Hertzog Young Author Of Spinning Out: Climate Change, Mental Health and Fighting for a Better Future

From my list on helping us make utopian dreams come true.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve spent my life obsessed with utopias, knowing from a young age that the human world is unnecessarily cruel. Utopias aren’t a delusion, nor a destination; they’re navigation tools. As an activist-researcher on climate, new economics, and mental health, I experiment with practical routes to radically better worlds. It’s a prefigurative stroke of luck that the pleasure and connection we long for are vital for creating radical change. I nearly died in 2019, after a suicide attempt tied to the dire state of the world. Rebuilding myself, including learning to walk after losing both of my legs, forced an epistemological and ontological reckoning. Now, I’m more realistically hopeful than ever.

Charlie's book list on helping us make utopian dreams come true

Charlie Hertzog Young Why did Charlie love this book?

I’ve been a climate activist for 15+ years and suffered major mental breakdowns as a result. This book has been liberatory.

The Three Ecologies practically explains the overlapping relationships between ecology, society, and the human mind and, written as it was in the ‘80s, Guattari’s proposed ‘ecosophy’ was alarmingly prescient, and practical. He simplifies the complexities of technological, social, and ecological devastation into action.

We’re not the isolated beings our culture says we are. Our minds are made up of and drastically impacted by our ecology and our society, and vice versa. Ecosophy is a practice, a different way of being in the world.

Coming to understand myself as physically and mentally embedded in the world gave me a sense of safety and strength. It gave me confidence in my own mind, a mind that had been pathologised for over a decade.

Guattari was a visionary ecologist, an incandescent critic…

By Felix Guattari, Ian Pindar (translator), Paul Sutton (translator)

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Extending the definition of ecology to encompass social relations and human subjectivity as well as environmental concerns, The Three Ecologies argues that the ecological crises that threaten our planet are the direct result of the expansion of a new form of capitalism and that a new ecosophical approach must be found which respects the differences between all living systems. A powerful critique of capitalism and a manifesto for a new way of thinking, the book is also an ideal introduction to the work of one of Europe's most radical thinkers. This edition includes a chronology of Guattari's life and work,…


Book cover of Envisioning Real Utopias

Charlie Hertzog Young Author Of Spinning Out: Climate Change, Mental Health and Fighting for a Better Future

From my list on helping us make utopian dreams come true.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve spent my life obsessed with utopias, knowing from a young age that the human world is unnecessarily cruel. Utopias aren’t a delusion, nor a destination; they’re navigation tools. As an activist-researcher on climate, new economics, and mental health, I experiment with practical routes to radically better worlds. It’s a prefigurative stroke of luck that the pleasure and connection we long for are vital for creating radical change. I nearly died in 2019, after a suicide attempt tied to the dire state of the world. Rebuilding myself, including learning to walk after losing both of my legs, forced an epistemological and ontological reckoning. Now, I’m more realistically hopeful than ever.

Charlie's book list on helping us make utopian dreams come true

Charlie Hertzog Young Why did Charlie love this book?

This book is a bible for people who care about changing the system, rather than just tinkering around the edges.

A soliologist and organiser, Erik Olin Wright manages to map out strategic exits from our exploitative economic, social, and political structures. He pulls together building blocks for a different world, shows them to us, and offers them for us to experiment with. Olin Wright was writing about things like universal basic income way before they were sexy and he writes with both passion and precision.

As someone who’s spent most of my life trying to get closer to the roots of our collective struggles, Olin Wright’s work is a huge support. It’s often difficult to feel like we’re making a difference, like everything’s sliding in the wrong direction no matter what we do.

Envisioning Real Utopias is a solid manual and a vital companion, covered with ink stains and pencil…

By Erik Olin Wright,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Rising inequality of income and power, along with recent convulsions in the finance sector, have made the search for alternatives to unbridled capitalism more urgent than ever. Yet few are attempting this task-most analysts argue that any attempt to rethink our social and economic relations is utopian. Erik Olin Wright's major new work is a comprehensive assault on the quietism of contemporary social theory. A systematic reconstruction of the core values and feasible goals for Left theorists and political actors, Envisioning Real Utopias lays the foundations for a set of concrete, emancipatory alternatives to the capitalist system. Characteristically rigorous and…


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Book cover of The Ballad of Falling Rock

The Ballad of Falling Rock by Jordan Dotson,

Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the perfect voice. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper once asked: “Are his love songs closer to heaven than dying?” Others wonder how he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard it…

Book cover of Call of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power, and Use It For Good

Laura E. Anderson Author Of When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion

From my list on why religious trauma is trauma.

Why am I passionate about this?

My professional work has always been inspired by the personal journey I've gone on–which means that my interest in religious trauma stems from my own healing as well as client work and research. Previous research and therapeutic interventions have suggested atheism as a cure for religious trauma which is often unhelpful and can create just as much rigidity as someone experienced in a high control religion. I approach religious trauma as trauma–which means that resolving religious trauma can occur in the same ways that we use to resolve other trauma. Understanding religious trauma this way opens the door for a decrease in shame, more compassion towards self, and ultimately living a whole life.

Laura's book list on why religious trauma is trauma

Laura E. Anderson Why did Laura love this book?

I recommend this book time and time again because of the easy to understand trauma education as well as the practical exercises that guide the reader all the way through the trauma resolution process.

Whereas many books give tips and tricks on preparing someone to re-process their trauma, Kimberly gently guides and prepares the reader for resolving trauma on their own. Though the book is written for individuals born/socialized female, I believe this book is extremely helpful regardless of gender.

By Kimberly Ann Johnson,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Call of the Wild as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From trauma educator and somatic guide Kimberly Ann Johnson comes a cutting-edge guide for tapping into the wisdom and resilience of the body to rewire the nervous system, heal from trauma, and live fully.

In an increasingly polarized world where trauma is often publicly renegotiated, our nervous systems are on high alert. From skyrocketing rates of depression and anxiety to physical illnesses such as autoimmune diseases and digestive disorders, many women today find themselves living out of alignment with their bodies.

Kimberly Johnson is a somatic practitioner, birth doula, and postpartum educator who specializes in helping women recover from all…


Book cover of Notes from Underground

Robert Pettus Author Of Abry.

From my list on cultivating meaning in the face of societal absurdity.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in a rural area influenced by both Protestantism and Catholicism, I found that the daily habits of devoutly religious people were often contradictory to the basic practices of their religion. I also discovered that people were every day forced to adjust their beliefs and behaviors depending on which microcosm within the culture they were in at a given moment participating. People unable to play by these ever-shifting cultural rules would quickly lose respect. This scared the hell out of me, as I was never good at adjusting to different social situations on the fly, but I also found it interesting, and it therefore became the primary theme of my book. 

Robert's book list on cultivating meaning in the face of societal absurdity

Robert Pettus Why did Robert love this book?

Does it even matter whether you’re right or wrong? Is it important to be honest with yourself? Is fairness something anyone should value? Is it important to have good manners?

Questions like these spring into the mind of the reader continuously while working through the pages of Notes from the Underground. Though Dostoevsky doesn’t necessarily provide clear answers to any of these questions, his Underground Man is certainly ready and willing to brood on them. It’s always a little terrifying remembering how relatable he can be. 

By Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear (translator), Larissa Volokhonsky (translator)

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky give us a brilliantly faithful rendition of this classic novel, in all its tragedy and tormented comedy. In this second edition, they have updated their translation in honor of the 200th anniversary of Dostoevsky’s birth.

One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator of Dostoevsky's most revolutionary novel is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.


Book cover of Utopia

Peter Zarrow Author Of Abolishing Boundaries: Global Utopias in the Formation of Modern Chinese Political Thought, 1880-1940

From my list on utopianism east and west.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I was a teenager, I thought we could create a perfect world—or if not quite perfect, at least much, much better than the one we are currently destroying. Actually, I still think it’s possible, just a lot harder and a lot more dangerous than I originally thought. I’ve been interested in all the efforts to imagine and create utopias, which sometimes produce hells instead of heavens, ever since. I have evolved (I think it’s progress) from being a high school Maoist to something more mature while watching China’s attempts to improve the lives of its citizens with respect and sympathy.

Peter's book list on utopianism east and west

Peter Zarrow Why did Peter love this book?

This is the OG of utopias—written in 1516 about people living on a distant island. Later writers made up utopias set in the future, but More’s island is still fun to read about. A place where there is no private property, no one desires wealth, all citizens are equal, and all religions are tolerated—though there is no privacy (or premarital sex) either. Nobody knows whether More meant it as satire or longing, or even if we should translate u-topia as “no-place” or “good-place.”

By Thomas More,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

First published in Latin in 1516, Utopia was the work of Sir Thomas More (1477–1535), the brilliant humanist, scholar, and churchman executed by Henry VIII for his refusal to accept the king as the supreme head of the Church of England.
In this work, which gave its name to the whole genre of books and movements hypothesizing an ideal society, More envisioned a patriarchal island kingdom that practiced religious tolerance, in which everybody worked, no one has more than his fellows, all goods were community-owned, and violence, bloodshed, and vice nonexistent. Based to some extent on the writings of Plato…


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Book cover of Changing Woman: A Novel of the Camp Grant Massacre

Changing Woman by Venetia Hobson Lewis,

Arizona Territory, 1871. Valeria Obregón and her ambitious husband, Raúl, arrive in the raw frontier town of Tucson hoping to find prosperity. Changing Woman, an Apache spirit who represents the natural order of the world and its cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, welcomes Nest Feather, a twelve-year-old Apache girl,…

Book cover of Utopian Thought in the Western World

Peter Zarrow Author Of Abolishing Boundaries: Global Utopias in the Formation of Modern Chinese Political Thought, 1880-1940

From my list on utopianism east and west.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I was a teenager, I thought we could create a perfect world—or if not quite perfect, at least much, much better than the one we are currently destroying. Actually, I still think it’s possible, just a lot harder and a lot more dangerous than I originally thought. I’ve been interested in all the efforts to imagine and create utopias, which sometimes produce hells instead of heavens, ever since. I have evolved (I think it’s progress) from being a high school Maoist to something more mature while watching China’s attempts to improve the lives of its citizens with respect and sympathy.

Peter's book list on utopianism east and west

Peter Zarrow Why did Peter love this book?

The Manuels give an exhaustive but very readable history of utopian thought from the Renaissance (Thomas More) to Marxism, with backward glances to ancient Judaic and Hellenic cultures. This book explains how and why utopias have been central to Western thought, showing how the utopias of one age seem dystopian in another age (or even their own), presented in wry prose that draws readers into the story.

By Frank E. Manuel, Fritzie P. Manuel,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Utopian Thought in the Western World as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This masterly study has a grand sweep. It ranges over centuries, with a long look backward over several millennia. Yet the history it unfolds is primarily the story of individuals: thinkers and dreamers who envisaged an ideal social order and described it persuasively, leaving a mark on their own and later times.

The roster of utopians includes men of all stripes in different countries and eras--figures as disparate as More and Fourier, the Marquis de Sade and Edward Bellamy, Rousseau and Marx. Fascinating character studies of the major figures are among the delights of the book.

Utopian writings run the…


Book cover of Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity

G. Samantha Rosenthal Author Of Living Queer History: Remembrance and Belonging in a Southern City

From my list on genre-bending books on queer pasts and futures.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a queer transgender woman living in the Appalachian South. When I moved here in 2015 I threw myself into doing community-based LGBTQ history. I co-founded the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project, an ongoing queer public history initiative based in Roanoke, Virginia. As a historian and an avid reader, I am fascinated by how queer and trans people think about the past, how we remember and misremember things, and what role historical consciousness plays in informing the present and future. 

Samantha's book list on genre-bending books on queer pasts and futures

G. Samantha Rosenthal Why did Samantha love this book?

Queer theory can sometimes be head-scratching, but the first time I read Cruising Utopia (on a camping trip in the mountains), I found myself gazing anew at the trees above me and my lover by my side. The late great theorist pushes us to reconsider how queerness is experienced and remembered in quotidian times and spaces. From sharing a bottle of Coke with a lover to memorializing abandoned toilets in the New York City subway, Muñoz revels in the ecstatic potential of “queer utopian memory” and queer world-building. Cruising Utopia is a marriage of critical theory and thoughtful storytelling, giving readers a much-needed injection of hope in these thoroughly anti-queer times.    

By José Esteban Muñoz,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A 10th anniversary edition of this field defining work-an intellectual inspiration for a generation of LGBTQ scholars
Cruising Utopia arrived in 2009 to insist that queerness must be reimagined as a futurity-bound phenomenon, an insistence on the potentiality of another world that would crack open the pragmatic present. Part manifesto, part love-letter to the past and the future, Jose Esteban Munoz argued that the here and now were not enough and issued an urgent call for the revivification of the queer political imagination.
On the anniversary of its original publication, this edition includes two essays that extend and expand the…


Book cover of Looking Backward

Robert J. Pajer Author Of A Handful of Dust

From my list on various modes of time travel.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since I was a young boy, I’ve been fascinated with the concept of time. I’ve spent hours studying the physics of time as a hobby, and to this day, as an adult, that fascination continues. Whenever the topic of time arises in conversation, I will be the first to contribute my understanding of this mystery that has baffled humankind since the beginning of...well, time.

Robert's book list on various modes of time travel

Robert J. Pajer Why did Robert love this book?

I recommend this book, not because it’s an excellent literary work, it’s not, but because of its unique time travel theme that’s Rip Van Winkleesque and its imaginative presentation of a future society. The author wrote this in 1887, and he imagined technological advancements unheard of at that time.

Things like radio, credit cards, and ordering products through simply the push of a button. Bellamy presents this picture through a future utopian socialism of the year 2000. I found reading a nineteenth-century man’s extraordinary glimpse of moving through time revelatory for my own addiction to understanding the mystery of time.   

By Edward Bellamy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Looking Backward as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

First published in 1888, Looking Backward was one of the most popular novels of its day. Translated into more than twenty languages, its utopian fantasy influenced such thinkers as John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, Eugene V. Debs, and Norman Thomas. Writing from a nineteenth century perspective and poignantly critical of his own time, Bellamy advanced a remarkable vision of the future, including such daring predictions as the existence of radio, television, motion pictures, and credit cards.
On the surface, the novel is the story of time traveler Julian West, a young Bostonian who is put into a hypnotic sleep in the…


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Book cover of Changing Woman: A Novel of the Camp Grant Massacre

Changing Woman by Venetia Hobson Lewis,

Arizona Territory, 1871. Valeria Obregón and her ambitious husband, Raúl, arrive in the raw frontier town of Tucson hoping to find prosperity. Changing Woman, an Apache spirit who represents the natural order of the world and its cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, welcomes Nest Feather, a twelve-year-old Apache girl,…

Book cover of Men Like Gods

Ira Nayman Author Of The Dance: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction

From my list on wildly entertaining journeys around the multiverse.

Why am I passionate about this?

I, Ira Nayman, have been writing stories set in the multiverse for almost twenty years, first with the Alternate Reality News Service set of books, then with my Transdimensional Authority/Multiverse novels and, most recently, with multiverse triptychs (the spark for The Dance). One of the things that I recently realized about my writing is that a lot of it focuses on the factors that shape our lives and make us the people we are. My ongoing fascination with the multiverse is because it is a great vehicle for exploring this idea by showing us how our lives could have turned out if circumstances or our choices had been different.

Ira's book list on wildly entertaining journeys around the multiverse

Ira Nayman Why did Ira love this book?

Do you think this multiverse business is something new from MCU Labs? H.G. Wells wrote about parallel universes in this book back in 1923. 

Humble Mr. Barnstaple and some 1920 one-percenters pass through a dimensional rift into an alternate world called “Utopia.” Appropriately, there’s no disease or poverty, no war, and everybody’s into exploration and scientific progress. But there are also some worrying things (e.g. “eugenics-light”). Aldous Huxley’s anti-utopia Brave New World (1932) is partly a rebuttal of this book.

This book is more of a slow burn than the high impacts of wonder/terror in The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. However, the resolution of the story is ingenious, and Well’s vision of humanity’s destiny is still relevant after 101 years.

By H.G. Wells,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.

Welcome to Utopia.

When Mr. Barnstaple, an Earthling, is accidentally transported to Utopia with a group of others, he begins an adventure that will change how he views the world forever.

Utopia has no government. Utopia has no religion. People are governed only by their own conscience and desires, and Barnstaple is drawn into what he sees as a perfect society. But when a disease brought by the Earthlings threatens the existence of the Utopians, Barnstaple must make a choice: take over Utopia, or betray his own people…


Book cover of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
Book cover of The Three Ecologies
Book cover of Envisioning Real Utopias

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Interested in utopian, Russia, and Siberia?

Utopian 75 books
Russia 390 books
Siberia 48 books