Love The Land of Open Graves? Readers share 100 books like The Land of Open Graves...

By Jason De Leon,

Here are 100 books that The Land of Open Graves fans have personally recommended if you like The Land of Open Graves. 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 Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society

Allison Mickel Author Of Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent: A History of Local Archaeological Knowledge and Labor

From my list on how archaeology really works.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I applied to college, I thought Iā€™d study science and pursue my passions for art and justice separately. Then, I went to Kenya for my first excavation and found that archaeology combined my love for storytelling, data analysis, and making the world a better, safer, more inclusive place. As much as I love movies like Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, I never saw myself in them. They just donā€™t capture what I love about archaeology! Now, my researchā€”like this listā€”is dedicated to really understanding what makes archaeology so compelling, so rewarding, and most capable of telling nuanced stories that make us think differently about our past.

Allison's book list on how archaeology really works

Allison Mickel Why did Allison love this book?

This book is one of my absolute favorites for expressing how archaeology really works on a macro level. As a student, I learned that archaeology has often been co-opted to serve political and nationalist purposes.

But the hows and whys of that process werenā€™t clear until I started doing archaeology. I love how Nadia Abu El Haj makes extremely clear why archaeology as a science lends itself so well to solidifying claims about identity, history, and land. I really admire how Abu El Haj captures what happens between the direct, tangible encounter of a person with an artifact and the abstract, national level of narrative construction and policymaking.

By Nadia Abu El-Haj,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Archaeology in Israel is truly a national obsession, a practice through which national identity-and national rights-have long been asserted. But how and why did archaeology emerge as such a pervasive force there? How can the practices of archaeology help answer those questions? In this stirring book, Nadia Abu El-Haj addresses these questions and specifies for the first time the relationship between national ideology, colonial settlement, and the production of historical knowledge. She analyzes particular instances of history, artifacts, and landscapes in the making to show how archaeology helped not only to legitimize cultural and political visions but, far more powerfully,ā€¦


Book cover of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani Author Of The Cities We Need: Essential Stories of Everyday Places

From my list on struggles through the stories of real people.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in New York, the child of New Yorkers, every corner was replete with memories and histories that taught me life values. Walking through these meaningful places, I learned that the multiplicity of peopleā€™s stories and struggles to make space for themselves were what made the city and enriched everyoneā€™s lives. The books here echo the essential politics and personal connections of those stories, and all have been deeply meaningful to me. Now, with my firm Buscada, and in my writing and art practice, I explore the way peopleā€™s stories of belonging and community, resistance and rebuilding from cities around the globe help us understand our shared humanity.

Gabrielle's book list on struggles through the stories of real people

Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani Why did Gabrielle love this book?

Itā€™s hard to know quite where to begin with this bookā€“there is so much to love.

This book tells the story of the Great Migration of African American people out of the South across the United States to Chicago, New York, California, and beyond; it transforms and fills in a crucial part of American history that every American should know to understand our present day. But for me, what I love most starts with the way Isabel Wilkerson cares for peopleā€™s stories. 

Wilkerson tells this decades-long, sweeping, under-told story through individual stories that are so detailed and compelling, so thoroughly contextualized with historical research, that I was completely enmeshed in these peopleā€™s lives, their struggles, their loves, and their feelings. I cared. In the years since I read it, stories from the book often come to my mind, teaching and guiding me like the words of a beloved relative. 

By Isabel Wilkerson,

Why should I read it?

21 authors picked The Warmth of Other Suns as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER ā€¢ NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ā€¢ In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prizeā€“winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.

From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and officialā€¦


Book cover of The Best We Could Do

Rebecca Hamlin Author Of Crossing: How We Label and React to People on the Move

From my list on really understand global migration.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™ve been fascinated with the topic of immigration since childhood. My father is an immigrant, and my mother grew up overseas. My first job after college was working for a youth program for immigrant and refugee kids in Chicago. Now, I am a professor who teaches and writes about migration law. I find stories about how moving across borders shapes peopleā€™s lives to be endlessly interesting, bringing up themes of belonging, home, memory, trauma, and identity. I also think that the topic of global migration is intimately linked to questions of justice and equality and requires us all to reckon with the ways in which the colonial past shapes the present. 

Rebecca's book list on really understand global migration

Rebecca Hamlin Why did Rebecca love this book?

This graphic novel is gorgeous. It covers the story of a girl whose family has to escape Vietnam during the Fall of Saigon and make a new life in the United States.

The illustrations are beautiful, but the story is also beautifully told, showing the ways in which migration can affect family dynamics. It is about memory, sacrifice, trauma, and hope. Itā€™s also a coming-of-age story. While there are a lot of great graphic novels about migration, this one is my favorite.

By Thi Bui,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Best We Could Do as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 13, 14, 15, and 16.

What is this book about?

National bestseller
2017 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Finalist
ABA Indies Introduce Winter / Spring 2017 Selection
Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Spring 2017 Selection
ALA 2018 Notable Books Selection

An intimate and poignant graphic novel portraying one family's journey from war-torn Vietnam, from debut author Thi Bui.

This beautifully illustrated and emotional story is an evocative memoir about the search for a better future and a longing for the past. Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family's daring escapeā€¦


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorā€”and only womanā€”on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route upā€¦

Book cover of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Craig Nelson Author Of V Is for Victory: Franklin Roosevelt's American Revolution and the Triumph of World War II

From my list on history that will wake you up.

Why am I passionate about this?

I spent twenty years as a book publishing executive learning how the trade works before launching myself as a full-time author wanting to make the world a better place. My books use state-of-the-art scholarship for history you can read on the beach, and focus on ā€˜hingeā€™ moments, great turnings of the world, as well as on forgotten and unsung heroes.

Craig's book list on history that will wake you up

Craig Nelson Why did Craig love this book?

What ideas do you have about what the first peoples were like, and how human society developed?

Maybe youā€™ve even read the popular authors on this topic such as Diamond, Harari, Pinker, Hobbes, and Rousseau. Prepare to have all of your notions and received opinions upended and turned to dust by David Graeber (a man universally acknowledged as a genius) and the book he worked on for the last ten years of his life, which brings revolutionary ideas to 30,000 years of civilization.

By David Graeber, David Wengrow,

Why should I read it?

18 authors picked The Dawn of Everything as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolutionā€”from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequalityā€”and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.

For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlikeā€”either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reactionā€¦


Book cover of In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life

Allison Mickel Author Of Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent: A History of Local Archaeological Knowledge and Labor

From my list on how archaeology really works.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I applied to college, I thought Iā€™d study science and pursue my passions for art and justice separately. Then, I went to Kenya for my first excavation and found that archaeology combined my love for storytelling, data analysis, and making the world a better, safer, more inclusive place. As much as I love movies like Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, I never saw myself in them. They just donā€™t capture what I love about archaeology! Now, my researchā€”like this listā€”is dedicated to really understanding what makes archaeology so compelling, so rewarding, and most capable of telling nuanced stories that make us think differently about our past.

Allison's book list on how archaeology really works

Allison Mickel Why did Allison love this book?

This was one of the first archaeology books I was assigned when I started studying archaeology, and I only appreciate it more and more with time. I donā€™t think there is any book the captures so well the fact that real archaeologists actually learn much more from everyday, mundane objectsā€”rather than from the monuments and treasures that archaeology in the movies is all about. 

I still remember, too, the moment this book made it ā€˜clickā€™ for me that archaeology often reveals secrets that contradict the written record. A plantation owner might say, for instance, that they designed and built their house, but they canā€™t hide the existence of the front porch and other traces of African architectural and construction techniques.

My copy of this book is riddled with nearly 20-year-old post-it notes, each one representing an epiphany for a budding archaeologist just ahead of her first summer of excavation.

By James Deetz,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked In Small Things Forgotten as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A fascinating study of American life and an explanation of how American life is studied through the everyday details of ordinary living, colorfully depicting a world hundreds of years in the past.

History is recorded in many ways. According to  author James Deetz, the past can be seen most fully by studying the small things so often forgotten.  Objects such as doorways, gravestones, musical  instruments, and even shards of pottery fill in the  cracks between large historical events and depict the intricacies of daily life. In his completely revised and expanded edition of In Small Things Forgotten, Deetz has addedā€¦


Book cover of Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage

Shannon Lee Dawdy Author Of American Afterlives: Reinventing Death in the Twenty-First Century

From my list on by archaeologists for people who don't dig.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was a quiet kid who had trouble understanding people. I preferred being on my own, exploring remnants of logging camps and abandoned mines in the woods that surrounded my small town. In archaeology, I found a way to improve my comprehension of humans and still go exploring the object world. For me, archaeology is not about the distant past, nor about a set of methods. Rather, it is a way of seeing the world. As I write, I try to help the reader train their own archaeological eye in order to re-calibrate their ideas about what is possible in the past, present, and future.

Shannon's book list on by archaeologists for people who don't dig

Shannon Lee Dawdy Why did Shannon love this book?

If we have gotten better at recycling waste in the last few decades, it is in part thanks to Bill Rathje's invention of garbology. His innovative application of archaeological excavation and analysis techniques on American landfills proved that an archaeology of contemporary life is not only possible, but can contribute to solving today's problems. Before Rathje, who knew of our disposable diaper problem, or the fact that 'compostable' waste lingers a long time in the urban dump, or that landfills ooze toxic sludge? While archaeologists of antiquity love to find a good midden full of old bones and potsherds, Rathje digs us and tells us, in an amusing and accessible fashion, shocking things about American consumer habits and the waste landscapes that our economy continues to create.

By William Rathje, Cullen Murphy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

It is from the discards of former civilizations that archaeologists have reconstructed most of what we know about the past, and it is through their examination of todayā€™s garbage that William Rathje and Cullen Murphy inform us of our present. Rubbish! is their witty and erudite investigation into all aspects of the phenomenon of garbage. Rathje and Murphy show what the study of garbage tells us about a populationā€™s demographics and buying habits. Along the way, they dispel the common myths about our ā€œgarbage crisisā€ā€”about fast-food packaging and disposable diapers, about biodegradable garbage and the acceleration of the average familyā€™sā€¦


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Book cover of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier,

The coaching book that's for all of us, not just coaches.

It's the best-selling book on coaching this century, with 15k+ online reviews. BrenƩ Brown calls it "a classic". Dan Pink said it was "essential".

It is practical, funny, and short, and "unweirds" coaching. Whether you're a parent, a teacher,ā€¦

Book cover of Playing with Things: Engaging the Moche Sex Pots

Shannon Lee Dawdy Author Of American Afterlives: Reinventing Death in the Twenty-First Century

From my list on by archaeologists for people who don't dig.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was a quiet kid who had trouble understanding people. I preferred being on my own, exploring remnants of logging camps and abandoned mines in the woods that surrounded my small town. In archaeology, I found a way to improve my comprehension of humans and still go exploring the object world. For me, archaeology is not about the distant past, nor about a set of methods. Rather, it is a way of seeing the world. As I write, I try to help the reader train their own archaeological eye in order to re-calibrate their ideas about what is possible in the past, present, and future.

Shannon's book list on by archaeologists for people who don't dig

Shannon Lee Dawdy Why did Shannon love this book?

Leaping the false fences between ethnography, archaeology, and art history, Weismantel demonstrates that one of the best ways to get in touch with people living in the deep past is to pick up the objects they made and play with them. Funny, creative, sexy, and cool, this is the best book built around artifacts that I have ever read and it has made me realize just how animate objects really are. You will learn about sex, about ancient cultures of the Andes, and about how someone living 1500 years ago might still be pulling your leg.

By Mary Weismantel,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

More than a thousand years ago on the north coast of Peru, Indigenous Moche artists created a large and significant corpus of sexually explicit ceramic works of art. They depicted a diversity of sex organs and sex acts, and an array of solitary and interconnected human and nonhuman bodies. To the modern eye, these Moche "sex pots," as Mary Weismantel calls them, are lively and provocative but also enigmatic creations whose import to their original owners seems impossible to grasp.

In Playing with Things, Weismantel shows that there is much to be learned from these ancient artifacts, not merely asā€¦


Book cover of This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto

Rebecca Hamlin Author Of Crossing: How We Label and React to People on the Move

From my list on really understand global migration.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™ve been fascinated with the topic of immigration since childhood. My father is an immigrant, and my mother grew up overseas. My first job after college was working for a youth program for immigrant and refugee kids in Chicago. Now, I am a professor who teaches and writes about migration law. I find stories about how moving across borders shapes peopleā€™s lives to be endlessly interesting, bringing up themes of belonging, home, memory, trauma, and identity. I also think that the topic of global migration is intimately linked to questions of justice and equality and requires us all to reckon with the ways in which the colonial past shapes the present. 

Rebecca's book list on really understand global migration

Rebecca Hamlin Why did Rebecca love this book?

I loved this book because, while it is full of personal stories, it also looks at the big picture and asks why global migration is happening in the ways that it is.

The author centers colonialism in his explanation of why people are coming from the Global South to the North and why it is short-sighted to fear and loathe such newcomers. Mehta is a really excellent writerā€“I loved the way he weaved the forest and the trees together to help explain the politics of migration from the global to the local level. 

By Suketu Mehta,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked This Land Is Our Land as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An impassioned defence of global immigration from the acclaimed author of Maximum City.

Drawing on his family's own experience emigrating from India to Britain and America, and years of reporting around the world, Suketu Mehta subjects the worldwide anti-immigrant backlash to withering scrutiny. The West, he argues, is being destroyed not by immigrants but by the fear of immigrants. He juxtaposes the phony narratives of populist ideologues with the ordinary heroism of labourers, nannies and others, from Dubai to New York, and explains why more people are on the move today than ever before. As civil strife and climate changeā€¦


Book cover of Refuge

Rebecca Hamlin Author Of Crossing: How We Label and React to People on the Move

From my list on really understand global migration.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™ve been fascinated with the topic of immigration since childhood. My father is an immigrant, and my mother grew up overseas. My first job after college was working for a youth program for immigrant and refugee kids in Chicago. Now, I am a professor who teaches and writes about migration law. I find stories about how moving across borders shapes peopleā€™s lives to be endlessly interesting, bringing up themes of belonging, home, memory, trauma, and identity. I also think that the topic of global migration is intimately linked to questions of justice and equality and requires us all to reckon with the ways in which the colonial past shapes the present. 

Rebecca's book list on really understand global migration

Rebecca Hamlin Why did Rebecca love this book?

I couldnā€™t stop listening to this book. This autobiographical tale of a girl who flees Iran, grows up in the United States, and migrates to Europe is powerful and poignant in a way only a really good story can be. It perfectly captures the sense of being from multiple places but never truly at home. Nayeri has also written excellent nonfiction on the topic of migration and refuge, but this book has stayed with me and remains one of my favorite novels.

By Dina Nayeri,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

ā€œRich and colorfulā€¦ [Refuge] has the kind of immediacy commonly associated with memoir, which lends it heft, intimacy, atmosphere.ā€ ā€“New York Times

The moving lifetime relationship between a father and a daughter, seen through the prism of global immigration and the contemporary refugee experience.

An Iranian girl escapes to America as a child, but her father stays behind. Over twenty years, as she transforms from confused immigrant to overachieving Westerner to sophisticated European transplant, daughter and father know each other only from their visits: four crucial visits over two decades, each in a different international city. The longer they areā€¦


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Book cover of Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership That Created the Free World

Harry and Arthur by Lawrence J. Haas,

With Franklin Rooseveltā€™s death in April 1945, Vice President Harry Truman and Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican leader on foreign policy, inherited a world in turmoil. With Europe flattened and the Soviets emerging as Americaā€™s new adversary, Truman and Vandenberg built a tight, bipartisan partnership at a bitterly partisan timeā€¦

Book cover of Stonehenge: Making Space

Allison Mickel Author Of Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent: A History of Local Archaeological Knowledge and Labor

From my list on how archaeology really works.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I applied to college, I thought Iā€™d study science and pursue my passions for art and justice separately. Then, I went to Kenya for my first excavation and found that archaeology combined my love for storytelling, data analysis, and making the world a better, safer, more inclusive place. As much as I love movies like Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, I never saw myself in them. They just donā€™t capture what I love about archaeology! Now, my researchā€”like this listā€”is dedicated to really understanding what makes archaeology so compelling, so rewarding, and most capable of telling nuanced stories that make us think differently about our past.

Allison's book list on how archaeology really works

Allison Mickel Why did Allison love this book?

I read this book at a time when I was feeling dissatisfied with archaeological writingā€™s ability to capture the feeling of being at an archaeological siteā€”all of the sensory experiences and historical enigma.

I loved that much of this book was written as a series of dialogues that actually took place while walking around Stonehenge. I also love that this text looks directly at different peopleā€™s thoughts and experience of the site, and allowed those contestations and disagreements to remain unresolved.

To me, this book felt like the uncertain social experience of finding so much, and yet never enough, through the archaeological process.

By Barbara Bender,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

This book is an imaginative exploration of a place that has fascinated, intrigued and perplexed visitors for centuries. Instead of seeing Stonehenge as an isolated site, the author sets the stones within a wider landscape and explores how use and meaning have changed from prehistoric times right through to the present. Throughout the millennia, the Stonehenge landscape has been used and re-used, invested with new meanings, and has given rise to myths and stories. The author creatively explores how the landscape has been appropriated and contested, and invokes the debates and experiences of people who have very different and oftenā€¦


Book cover of Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society
Book cover of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Book cover of The Best We Could Do

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