100 books like Unearthing

“The face that launched a thousand ships,” as Homer would say. Pollan’s witty and well-written treatment of how plants think and act to modulate their environments inspired 21st-century “critical plant studies” in the Anglophone world, including mine.

The book starts you thinking about the thousands of ways plants elbow into your world and how much they matter to your existence on earth, in economic but also spiritual senses. You end up agape in wonder.

I love swamps and streams and rivers (and I’m learning to love the ocean), and I especially love the miniature ecosystems that Kimmerer studies and describes with such gentle care in this book. Sure, everyone’s read Braiding Sweetgrass. (Wait, you haven’t? What are you doing here?! Go! Read!) But have you read the one about moss?

Both books reminded me of why I am drawn to science, of how structured observation and research can illuminate complex and dynamic processes. But I found the science in this one more compelling. It’s a collection of graceful retellings focused on the intricacies of the exact kinds of watery habitats I love best.

I was enthralled with this book from its very premise: a book about looking closely…really closely. Haskell tracks the growth of a square meter of forest over a year, bringing to life the minutiae of life.

It’s a book that made me want to get down on the ground and get to know the unseen details of every patch of land I encountered. 

One-stop shopping on the recent history of unwanted (by people) plants.

Though Mabey does not delve far into the past, his treatment of how colonialism in the past two centuries re-shaped the botanical landscape of the entire planet is comprehensive. He is particularly good on islands, where "invasive" plants arrived and thrived with shocking regularity as European and other ships created denser transcontinental connectivity.

He proves that modernity and its technologies did not fix the ongoing human incapacity to control vegetation, but if anything, left us with a bigger and more hybrid botanical mixture.

After my mother was committed, I went through five foster homes by sixteen. Wolff’s early years mirrored mine in some respects—broken home, high school dropout, military service a path forward. He even served in the Mekong Delta, arriving early in 1968 just as the Tet Offensive was trigged. I arrived one week later. Wolff’s tight dialogue and crazy exploits such as the color television resonated. But “Last Shot”—the last two pages really touched me as he reflects on a lost friend Hugh—no chance to live life and have a family. Many years ago my daughter went to Washington D.C. She asked if I knew anyone on the Wall. She returned with thirteen etchings. Each day I reflect on why I have lived so long and they never had a chance. Wolff shares that emotion so masterfully throughout his book.

I know John Patrick McAfee from art shows where the ‘art husband’ helped his wife set up and present her work. I came to understand him better after completing a year of research on the US Army Special Forces, while creating a drawing honoring the Green Berets.

Slow Walk In a Sad Rain has been described elsewhere as the Catch-22 of the Vietnam War. The story more than lives up to the comparison. McAfee’s wry, tragic humor represents an authentic slice of the life he lived as a Special Forces medic; how he was able to move on from that experience and remain an affable, productive individual capable of sharing his multiple gifts is the greatest mystery, and a testimony to every man and woman who survived the ordeal. 

This is the best military history of the war from mid-1968 to 1974 during the MACV command of General Abrams. It is essential for understanding the U.S. troop withdrawal period and the combat performance of the revitalized South Vietnamese Army. With his Vietnam staff service, CIA experience, and Ph.D. in history, Sorley provides a unique revisionist narrative and in-depth analysis of those critical but ignored and misinterpreted years. 

All My Sins Remembered is a deeply felt, moving story of what happens to Otto McGavin, a well-meaning Anglo-Buddhist who joins the intergalactic Confederacion at age 22 to travel off Earth and help protect the rights of humans and nonhumans, is trained to become an agent of the Confederacion, and loses his soul in the process.

First published in 1977, this is a searing near-future tale that should be required reading for anyone considering a career in the Secret Service.

Grandmaster science fiction writer Joe Haldeman is renowned in the field for his decades of brilliant stories and books. Awarded the Hugo and Nebula, he is the author of the Forever War trilogy, The Hemingway Hoax, 1968, and many others.

His work often features scathing treatments of warfare and the brutal idiocy of military bureaucracy, based on his firsthand experience as a soldier in the Vietnam War.

As a child, I lived in abject poverty on a little farm in northern Minnesota. By ten years old I was trapping raccoons and shooting squirrels to help put food on our table. When I was in Vietnam, I felt a deep empathy for the Vietnamese fishermen and farmers who lived in poverty complicated by the vicious war. Years later when I began reading Dang Thuy Tram’s diary, I couldn’t put it down. The loss and waste and love for her comrades struck close to home and made me feel guilty for my participation in the war. In her writing, Dang brings to life so many of her Vietnamese comrades who were killed—making one stop to consider the cost of war. In a way the book reminds me of All Quiet on the Western Front written by a German soldier—the loss and waste.

By far the best novel on LRRPs in Vietnam, and perhaps the best fiction to come out of the war. Highly decorated Miller extended his tour three times with F Company 58th Infantry (LRP) and L Company Rangers in order to “out guerrilla the guerilla.” Book awarded the Bernal Diaz Prize for military fiction.