100 books like The Darkness Echoing

This was one of the first books that got me thinking critically about ‘dark tourism’. Harrison inspired me to look at how the dead maintain their relations with the living. In turn, the book galvanized my thinking of the many touristic places where the dead cohabit the world of the living. These range from graves, monuments, and memorials, and made me think about how we give the dead a memorialized afterlife. Drawing upon philosophy, history, and poetry, Harrison teaches us that as we follow in the footsteps of the dead, we are not self-authored. Instead, the thought of death shapes the communion of the living. Within the ‘Dominion of the Dead’, the dead become our guardians where we give them a future so that they may give us a past. 

This book enlightened me by learning that people have long travelled to visit the dead. With ‘dark tourism’ initially portrayed as an imitation of postmodernity, Westover dispelled that perspective. Instead, I learnt that travelling to meet the dead had long been a feature of the literary tourism landscape. A provocative play on the word ‘necro’ with visiting deceased authors’ homes, haunts and graves during the Romantic period, Westover offers an inspired contribution to understanding Romanticism within the context of death studies and travel history. I argue that in an age of antiquarian revival and a love of books, the emergent ‘Necromantic’ culture that created touristic habits continues to the present day. To that end, Necomanticism exposes a nexus of book love and memorial ritual that has deeply influenced (Western) literary culture. 

With a healthy dose of gallows humour, Sarah Vowell explores glorious conundrums of American history, politics, and culture. As such, the book provoked me to appreciate how visiting sites of the significant dead has long been in the touristic imagination. The book takes you on a journey – part history lesson, part travelogue – through the black spots of American political violence. Through a bizarre road trip to places where American politicians met a bloody end, I found Vowell’s own thoughts on the American character both witty and quirky. I also love how she explodes myths and, consequently, exposes a profound level of hypocrisy in the quest for (American) political and cultural advantage.  

P.J. O’Rourke, a former war correspondent cum travel author of Holidays in Hell, informs us that there are rules about travelling for fun. One of those rules is that tourists must find the most crowded airplane and be treated as self-loading freight! However, O’Rourke does not travel for fun. Yet, I discovered in this book that his travels to places associated with the odd or macabre are fun – and indeed funny. O’Rourke travels with his wife and young family and we accompany them as he reveals witty and irrelevant perspectives on the places he visits. In his concluding thoughts, when he asks what is the point of the Washington Memorial, it was then I realised I had chuckled all the way through this droll travelogue as a backseat passenger.  

This is the book to read if you are young or seeking something for a young reader.

The suffering and endurance of ordinary men women and children during those terrible years is described with empathy and admiration. It is also, as the book description states, "the story of the heroes among the Irish people and how they held on to hope."

Throughout history – and into the present – hunger is always profoundly gendered, women being disproportionately impacted upon than men. The point has been remarkably little studied so it’s a good thing that the most prolific writer on the Great Famine of Ireland, Christine Kinealy alongside two other fine famine scholars, have finally addressed this. The book is a series of essays exploring the roles that women (and children) played during the famine. Timely and powerful and a useful reminder that when it comes to writing the history of hunger we’ve only just started.

There’s a minor thread in my novel about the Irish Potato Famine, and this book was a major resource. It was sobering to learn that there was enough food to feed the Irish peasantry, but it was not distributed according to need. (Much of it was exported.) Worse still, it was a cultural moment in which the wealthy found ways to absolve themselves of the poverty of their neighbors. But I was most shocked to learn about the scientific implications. Essentially, the potato variety that failed was a monoculture. And the solution to the blight involved returning to the Andes, with its vast genetic diversity, and finding a resistant strain. 

This product of intensive research by members of the Department of Geography at Cork University covers every aspect of the famine as experienced by the people who lived and died through it.

Lavishly illustrated with maps and facsimiles of actual documents it details everything from the design and administration of workhouses to the treatment of migrants upon arrival in Canada, the USA, and Australia. No other book provides such an eloquent and devastating narrative of the suffering experienced by Irish people during the period 1845-52.

Devoid of rhetoric, it displays the facts in easy-to-understand text and statistical analysis, enhanced with first-hand eye-witness accounts from letters and journal extracts.

I love primary sources and histories that reproduce them. Here is another amazing feat of historical detection. “Details have been taken from eye-witness accounts; original Certificates of Registration, paintings, and contemporary lithograph drawings have been reproduced,” may sound dry but this book is alive with the voices of immigrants telling both tragic and triumphant tales. Anyone whose Irish ancestors came to North America between 1846 and 1851 will want to examine the numerous passenger lists that Laxton includes. I think of this book and all it taught me when I visit my hometown and stop by the monument commemorating Irish immigrants on the shore of Lake Ontario.

The hard fact of the matter is that in the modern world no one needs be hungry, let alone die from starvation. But the idea that famine is not a result of ‘total food-availability decline’ but instead was a function of ‘entitlements’ is Sen’s – and is one of the most profound and important theories of the past hundred years. The theory is a complex one but can be boiled down to the idea that hunger – and then famine – are the product of political choices in the distribution of goods. It is impossible, meaningless even, to write of hunger without first thinking of Sen’s extraordinary book.