100 books like The Unsung Heroes

Daphne Sheldrick has written this memoir to give us an insight into her life, saving and raising young elephants and numerous other wild animals with her husband in the Tsavo National Park in Kenya. Her book is hugely inspiring and, although Kenya is strictly speaking not in Southern Africa. South African and East African wildlife are very similar and her description of an orphan sanctuary inspired me to write about such a sanctuary in my own book.

I’m a cat person (please don’t tell my dog). Therefore I was naturally drawn to a book by Dr. Alan Rabinowitz—a zoologist who dedicated his life to protecting the world’s wild cat species. But while young readers might pick up this book because they are cat lovers or intrigued by jaguars, they’ll discover so much more. This is the true story about a boy with a stutter and how he finds his voice by talking to jaguars. Later, he returns the favor by using his voice to advocate for big-cat conservation. Beautifully illustrated by Catia Chien, this memoir shows what it means to keep a promise and how pursuing your passion can help you overcome obstacles. The back matter includes an interesting Q&A with Dr. Rabinowitz.

This book exposes the troubling roots of the American conservation movement and explores how racism continues to keep people out of our public spaces. I’d consider it an illuminating must-read for anyone who loves this planet and its people and wants to usher us into a more inclusive era of outdoor exploration.

Okay, I confess this is the same story as the recommendation above, The Elephants Come Home, but this is written by the actual guy, Lawrence Anthony, who undertook this effort.

Also, instead of a picture book, it is a 380-page tale told by the person who lived it. If you love The Elephants Come Home, you’ll want to read Elephant Whisperer as well.

I found myself exclaiming again and again over the stories that Anthony tells of life on the sanctuary.

This a cracking read – I read it in just over a day, and it wasn’t a chore. So I read it again, immediately!

A book about 10 declining birds in the United Kingdom; Corncrake, Kittiwake, Capercaillie, Turtle Dove, Lapwing, Black Grouse, Bittern, Hen Harrier, Grey Partridge, and Nightingale. He talks to people who like them, study them, and/or conserve them. 

The author is an exceptional talent in that few could write so well about the species, the places, the people, the history of it all, and throw in poems, songs, and insights into shooting, farming, cookery, and eating too. There are some great conversations and a wide range of characters from a good spread of perspectives. I went away enriched and I keep returning to this book.

Geoff is an eminent Historian having scripted many classics such as the Civil War TV series and, Diane, is a former Newsweek journalist who has reported on environmental issues. Both are tiger-keen aficionados’ who are—for some unfathomable reason—also morbidly fascinated by generations of gritty, grimy, and aggravatingly stubborn conservationists in India, who have fought to save India’s wild tigers through the colonial and post-colonial eras. They also write in an engaging, witty style focusing on tiger-obsessed humans rather than the magnificent cat. As one of their ‘subjects’ I believe this book provides the appropriate social and historical contexts for my own book.  

This book comes with all the fun and banter that you expect from Scalzi. Jamie, the main character, is from our Earth but gets a job on a parallel Earth where nuclear-powered Kaiju are the order of the day.

The fantastical and far-fetched plot is a lot of fun, but there is a much deeper point to this book, calling out late-stage capitalism and tech-bro culture. This book is a wild adventure and a condemnation of the morally corrupt individuals who have so much power in our own world.

A beautifully told story about a Namibian family who created a real-life Noah’s Ark in the desert. Marieta van der Merwe and her late husband Nick turned their cattle ranch into a refuge for thousands of wounded or orphaned animals who can’t make it on their own in the wild. This book, full of wonder and gentle souls, has special meaning for me. I met Barbara Bennett, a North Carolina University literature professor, when I was sent to Namibia to write a story about Harnas Wildlife Sanctuary for the Guardian and we were both volunteering. Afterward, I introduced her to my New York literary agent who sold the book. It’s so vividly written that it allowed me to relive my experiences of daily mischief of the baboons, walking full-grown lions in the desert, sleeping with cheetahs under the stars, and watching the giant thunderstorms on the porch with a menagerie… show more.

I read this novel in university in a course taught brilliantly by the scholar WH New. It was the first time I understood the complexity of layers in great literature. Ostensibly about a businessman who buys a farm, it encompasses race relations, power in all its guises, sexuality, relationships to nature, and how character influences personal destiny. Written with outrage and compassion.

I kept The Conservationist in mind when I wrote my own book as an example of what a novel could be, but more than that, it taught me how to think about the world in a new way.

This is an old book, in the tradition made so popular by Jack London. There were a number of these ‘proud, free dog of the North’ type of books published, and they are all great reads, yet this one is in my opinion the finest of them. It never descends into mawkish sentiment, but tells Kazan’s story from his own viewpoint; there is little of the human world, and we get a glimpse of just how alien a wild animal is, how different from our own, more domestic companions. 

A tremendously exciting read, with not a dull page in it.