Love Wall Disease? Readers share 100 books like Wall Disease...

By Jessica Wapner,

Here are 100 books that Wall Disease fans have personally recommended if you like Wall Disease. 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 The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

June Carolyn Erlick Author Of A Gringa in Bogotá: Living Colombia's Invisible War

From my list on classics for understanding Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I accidentally fell in love with Latin America, a love that has lasted my lifetime. When I was young, I lived in a Dominican neighborhood in New York, learning Spanish from my neighbors. After I graduated from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism I got a job covering the Cuban community in New Jersey because I spoke Spanish. Eventually I ended up living in Colombia and then Managua as a foreign correspondent. Now I edit a magazine at Harvard about Latin America. It's not just the news that interests me; I love the cadence of the language, the smell and taste of its varied cuisine, the warmth of the people, the culture, and, yes, soccer.

June's book list on classics for understanding Latin America

June Carolyn Erlick Why did June love this book?

Greg Grandin is a historian's historian, a brilliant researcher, a captivating writer. It's honestly hard to pick which of his books to feature here. But since The End of the Myth won the Pultizer Prize, I'll choose it as my favorite. What I loved about this book is that it gives me a new perspective about the history of my own country—about which, frankly, I do not know that much—and the region I have reported on for most of my life, Latin America. He makes connections and does so in a compelling fashion.

The book focuses on the United States and the border, but it sheds much light on how the myth of manifest destiny has shaped the way we think of ourselves and our relationship with our southern neighbors.

By Greg Grandin,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked The End of the Myth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE

A new and eye-opening interpretation of the meaning of the frontier, from early westward expansion to Trump’s border wall.

Ever since this nation’s inception, the idea of an open and ever-expanding frontier has been central to American identity. Symbolizing a future of endless promise, it was the foundation of the United States’ belief in itself as an exceptional nation – democratic, individualistic, forward-looking. Today, though, America hasa new symbol: the border wall.

In The End of the Myth, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin explores the meaning of the frontier throughout the full sweep of U.S. history…


Book cover of Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security

Michael Blake Author Of Justice, Migration, and Mercy

From my list on understanding what’s happening at the border.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a political philosopher who lives in Seattle. I teach and write about political ethics, and the ways in which moral concepts change when they get applied to the relationships between states—and to the complicated borders that define where states end. I tend to write about what puzzles me, and many of these puzzles come from my personal life; I’m a migrant myself, and the experience of migrating to the United States led me to write about what sorts of values a country can rightly pursue through migration policyand what sorts of things, more generally, it can and can’t do to migrants themselves.  

Michael's book list on understanding what’s happening at the border

Michael Blake Why did Michael love this book?

The insistence that migration is a ‘crisis’ has led to a greater willingness to take enforcement as more urgent than human rights. Todd Miller’s book is a moral argument about the costs of that bargain. He argues that the powers given to those who enforce borders have led to abusive and violent practices at the border—and, increasingly, within the United States itself. The book is sobering, but important—and it should worry all of us, citizen and migrant alike.

By Todd Miller,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Border Patrol Nation as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"In his scathing and deeply reported examination of the U.S. Border Patrol, Todd Miller argues that the agency has gone rogue since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, trampling on the dignity and rights of the undocumented with military-style tactics...Miller's book arrives at a moment when it appears that part of the Homeland Security apparatus is backpedaling by promising to tone down its tactics, maybe prodded by investigative journalism, maybe by the revelations of NSA leaker Edward Snowden...Border Patrol is quite possibly the right book at the right time ..."--Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times "At the start of his unsettling and…


Book cover of The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández Author Of Migrating to Prison: America's Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants

From my list on turning immigration policies into human stories.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an immigration legal scholar and lawyer, I read about immigration a lot. From laws that seem written to confuse to articles in academic journals written for an audience of experts, I’m lucky to love what I do—and so I enjoy most of what I read. But these books are special. They drew me in and wouldn’t let go until the last page. Whether fiction or non-fiction, they are written by storytellers who bring laws and policies to life.

César's book list on turning immigration policies into human stories

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández Why did César love this book?

Much of “the line,” as Border Patrol agents and migrants sometimes call the border, is far from big cities and curious journalists. And a lot of what happens there, happens under cover of darkness or behind the secured doors of Border Patrol stations.

As a former Border Patrol agent, Cantú saw what happened when no one else was looking. His memoir shares it with the rest of us.

By Francisco Cantú,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Line Becomes a River as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2019, an electrifying memoir from a Mexican-American US Border Patrol guard

'Stunningly good... The best thing I've read for ages'
James Rebanks, author of The Shepherd's Life

Francisco Cantu was a US Border Patrol agent from 2008 to 2012.

In this extraordinary account, he describes his work in the desert along the Mexican border. He tracks humans through blistering days and frigid nights. He detains the exhausted and hauls in the dead. The line he is sworn to defend, however, begins to dissolve. Haunted by nightmares, Cantu abandons the Patrol for civilian…


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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 doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Book cover of Border Hacker: A Tale of Treachery, Trafficking, and Two Friends on the Run

Abigail Leslie Andrews Author Of Banished Men: How Migrants Endure the Violence of Deportation

From my list on the criminalization of immigrant men.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a scholar of gender and state violence, and I live and work at the US-Mexico border. For the past several years, I’ve worked collaboratively with large teams of Latinx-identified students to study the impacts of US immigration policies on migrants from Mexico and Central America. We realized that even though about half of immigrants are women, around 95% of deportees are men. So, we started to think about how US policies criminalize immigrant men. I became especially interested in how immigration enforcement (at the border and beyond) intersects with mass incarceration. In the list, I pick up books that trace the multinational reach of the carceral apparatus that comes to treat migrants as criminals.

Abigail's book list on the criminalization of immigrant men

Abigail Leslie Andrews Why did Abigail love this book?

This is the incredibly gripping tale of the friendship and interdependency between Levi, a young (23-year-old) anthropological researcher who joins a migrant caravan, and Axel, a migrant and hacker who ends up employed by many bigshots in the migrant-aid industry within Mexico.

It uncovers a terrible set of abuses in migrant shelters, as shelter leaders spy on one another, brutally mistreat migrants, and manipulate migrants and the government. I read it in three days.

By Levi Vonk,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

An unlikely friendship, a four-thousand-mile voyage, and an impenetrable frontier—this dramatic odyssey reveals the chaos and cruelty US immigration policies have unleashed beyond our borders.

Axel Kirschner was a lifelong New Yorker, all Queens hustle and bravado. But he was also undocumented. After a minor traffic violation while driving his son to kindergarten, Axel was deported to Guatemala, a country he swore he had not lived in since he was a baby. While fighting his way back through Mexico on a migrant caravan, Axel met Levi Vonk, a young anthropologist and journalist from the US. That chance encounter would change…


Book cover of The New Border Wars: The Conflicts That Will Define Our Future

Alexander Diener Author Of Borders: A Very Short Introduction

From my list on 21st century borders.

Why am I passionate about this?

Beyond my fascination with borders as historical sites of conflict and shifting markers of control, I’ve spent an academic career studying the simultaneity of barrier and juncture. This research has led me to witness licit and illicit border crossings, refugee camps, commercial ports, smuggling, and conservation through cloistering. In my travels, I’ve perceived my vulnerability at certain borders and ease of passage at others. All of this afforded me insights into the human division and demarcation of space and resulted in books and articles on varied facets of bordering in the hope that I might contribute to inhibiting the bad and facilitating the good where territories meet.  

Alexander's book list on 21st century borders

Alexander Diener Why did Alexander love this book?

I found this book eminently readable. It’s like a story about borders, offering vivid portrayals of real conflictual political geographies. Dodds makes clear that borders play political, social, economic, and environmental roles that must be considered for any prospect of peace in the future.

This is the sort of book that educated readers, from college students to international jet setters, would find enlightening as to borders’ breadth of relevance in the 21st Century.

By Klaus Dodds,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A thrilling insight into international geopolitics by one of the world’s leading experts, examining the past, future, and present meaning of borders from the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11, Palestine to Pakistan, North Korea to Trump’s Wall, and beyond

What do the world’s best-known, most dangerous, and most unexpected border conflicts mean for our changing international relationships?

In The New Border Wars, border expert Klaus Dodds journeys into the geopolitical clashes of tomorrow in an eye-opening tour of border walls―literal and figurative―from the Gaza Strip to the space race. In the Himalayas, the Mediterranean, and elsewhere, the tension…


Book cover of Boundaries Undermined: the Ruins of Progress on the Bangladesh/India Border

Sayeed Ferdous Author Of Partition as Border-Making: East Bengal, East Pakistan and Bangladesh

From my list on South Asian history and culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

I teach anthropology but find my niche in the blurred zone of history and anthropology. My research interests include South Asian Studies; Historiography; Memory/Forgetting, and Postcolonial Nation, State, and Nationalism. My book Partition as Border-Making draws upon ethnographic details, using oral historical accounts from the Bengal borderland and archival materials. Focusing upon the significance of the mundane in history and its presentness, this research contributes to understanding postcolonial South Asia beyond “indocentrism.” At present, I am co-editing a Bangladesh Reader. In 2021, I jointly conducted a research project on the Partition migrants to Dhaka in partnership with Goethe Institute, Bangladesh.

Sayeed's book list on South Asian history and culture

Sayeed Ferdous Why did Sayeed love this book?

Delwar Hussein, an anthropologist, conducted his research along the north-eastern borderline of Bangladesh. He has been fascinating in depicting the transformation of the borderland from a site of evolving nation-states to the catchment area of cross-border neoliberal capitalism.

Hussein crafted the minute details of how the cement factory had changed the communities, lives, and livelihoods at that margin. The marginality of the Borderlanders is central in this work; however, as often, Borderland studies surprise us, this book also talks about opportunities and hopes. It would enable its readers to look into the postcolonial nation-states with an unorthodox approach.

By Delwar Hussain,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

When anthropologist Delwar Hussain arrived in a remote coal mining village on the Bangladesh/India border to research the security fence India is building around its neighbour, he discovered more about the globalised world than he had expected. The present narrative of the Bangladesh/ India border is one of increasing violence. Not so long ago, it was the site of a monumental modernist master-plan, symbolic of a larger optimism which was to revolutionise post-colonial nations around the world. Today this vision and what it gave rise to lies in spectacular ruin; the innards of the decomposing industrial past are scattered across…


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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. Brené 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,…

Book cover of A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900

Claire Jowitt Author Of The Culture of Piracy, 1580-1630: English Literature and Seaborne Crime

From my list on pirates in the age of sail.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a writer-researcher based at the University of East Anglia. My work is driven by a love of travel and the sea, and an interest in how people move between cultures and ideas across time. I’ve written widely on early modern travel writing and maritime culture, plays about cultural encounter including first contact, and the intersections between ideas about gender, race, colonial and/or imperial identities, and power. At heart, I’m a cultural historian interested in how people and writing can say one thing but mean another.

Claire's book list on pirates in the age of sail

Claire Jowitt Why did Claire love this book?

This book uses seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century piracy as one of its case studies to make innovative arguments about global history. Through a discussion of piracy, Benton seeks to transform our understanding of the significance of oceanic space. Though empires might assert control over territories and their inhabitants, in fact, their jurisdiction, or sovereignty, was uneven – thinner in some places than others, and only realized in fits and starts.


For Benton, the spatial figure of the corridor as a conduit for law and jurisdiction is vital to understanding the geography and movement of early modern imperial power. Inconsistencies in the application of prize law, the regulation of privateering, and the prosecution of piracy graphically show the unevenness of sovereignty at sea and the ways by which all types of mariner attempted to mark out jurisdictional corridors as they traversed the world's waters.

By Lauren Benton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Search for Sovereignty as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Search for Sovereignty approaches world history by examining the relation of law and geography in European empires between 1400 and 1900. Lauren Benton argues that Europeans imagined imperial space as networks of corridors and enclaves, and that they constructed sovereignty in ways that merged ideas about geography and law. Conflicts over treason, piracy, convict transportation, martial law, and crime created irregular spaces of law, while also attaching legal meanings to familiar geographic categories such as rivers, oceans, islands, and mountains. The resulting legal and spatial anomalies influenced debates about imperial constitutions and international law both in the colonies and…


Book cover of Thinking Europe: A History of the European Idea since 1800

Caner Tekin Author Of Debating Turkey in Europe: Identities and Concepts

From my list on European identity for history readers.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a postdoctoral researcher, I'm fascinated by the notions of cultural belonging to Europe and European nation-states, as they have evolved throughout history in relation to what the holders of these notions call their "others". I know of few cases in the field of identity and memory politics that are as controversial, as curious, as fragile, and yet as fascinating as the idea of a Europe, a social and political construct that emerges from past events but is shaped for political purposes. Debates about a common European history and memory are intertwined with those about the geographical and cultural definitions of Europe, and my book list often includes the most recent examples of these interactions.

Caner's book list on European identity for history readers

Caner Tekin Why did Caner love this book?

My first point of concern is the fact that ideas and concepts are historical products altered in time.

In his book, Professor Andrén provides a historical context for the ideas of Europe and their sources that have emerged over the last two centuries. He neatly shows the historicity of the thoughts as constructs linked to the regional and global conditions of their time.

He highlights the visions of Europe in the 19th century marked by revolutions and unifications; in the first half of the 20th century, marked by wars and crises. He then examines the visions in the second half of the century characterized by the search for peace and prosperity, European integration and a pan-European identity.

Let us navigate from Andrén's point of view that ideas about Europe did not die out, but evolved into more current constructs in modern European history.

By Mats Andrén,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Presenting a new historical narrative on European integration and identity this title examines how the concept of Europe has been entangled in a dynamic and dramatic tension between calls for unity and arguments for borders and division. Through an in-depth intellectual history of the idea of Europe, Mats Andren interrogates the concept of integration and more recent debates surrounding European identity across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the post-war period. Applying a broad range of original sources this unique work will be key reading for students and researchers studying European History, European Studies, Political History and related fields.


Book cover of What Do We Know and What Should We Do About the Irish Border?

Peter Foster Author Of What Went Wrong With Brexit: And What We Can Do About It

From my list on Britain after Brexit.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a journalist who spent 15 years reporting from all over the world – Kabul, Baghdad, New Delhi, Beijing, Washington D.C. – returning to London in 2015 to report on the UK’s relations with Europe. Then Brexit happened. As a reporter, I’d chronicled the rise of China and India after 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, but I’d failed to understand how far Britain had been consumed by the forces of populism that have roiled all Western democracies. I’ve spent the last eight years reporting on the fallout, from both sides of the English Channel; trying to unpack what went wrong, and see what we can do about it.

Peter's book list on Britain after Brexit

Peter Foster Why did Peter love this book?

As a young reporter in the mid-1990s, I cut my teeth reporting the end of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ and the eventual signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement peace deal. That deal was based around a constitutional ambiguity that was rocked by the Brexit vote.

This pithy volume by Queen's University Belfast politics professor Katy Hayward manages to blend absolute concision and with ambition, tracing the history of the Irish border that found itself at the heart of the UK’s often bitter Brexit negotiations with Europe.

Amid so much rhetoric, Hayward trades only in the facts while carefully framing the future choices that Brexit might bring to Northern Ireland.

By Katy Hayward,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked What Do We Know and What Should We Do About the Irish Border? as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Irish border is a manifestation of the relationship between Britain and Ireland. When that relationship has been tense, we have seen the worst effects at the Irish border in the form of violence, controls and barriers. When the relationship has been good, the Irish border has become - to all intents and purposes - open, invisible and criss-crossed with connections. Throughout its short existence, the symbolism of the border has remained just as important as its practical impact.

With the UK's exit from the European Union, the challenge of managing the Irish border as a source and a symbol…


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Book cover of I Am Taurus

I Am Taurus by Stephen Palmer,

The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.

Each of the sections is written from…

Book cover of The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia

James Borton Author Of Dispatches from the South China Sea: Navigating to Common Ground

From my list on dive deeply into the South China Sea territorial disputes.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a writer and waterman, I have traversed the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, setting crab pots and communing with fellow watermen who share a deep love for the estuary. I honor their livelihoods by responsibly harvesting blue crabs and oysters. My field notes have taken me beyond the Chesapeake, onto Hilton Head shrimping boats, onto the oyster beds in Bull's Bay in South Carolina, and into the contested South China Sea aboard Vietnamese fishing trawlers.

James' book list on dive deeply into the South China Sea territorial disputes

James Borton Why did James love this book?

Bill Hayton’s book helped guide me into this theme of the significant value and importance of the South China Sea. He offered a comprehensive historical narrative of the region from ancient times to the early 2010s while scrupulously outlining the territorial disputes and power struggles it has fostered.

His use of academic sources and journalistic articles was most readable. As a journalist, I welcomed his non-wonkish writing style and digressions on key actors in the unfolding dramas playing out in real-time on the ocean. I also met the author at several South China Sea conferences, and his open style and manner reflected in person were also present in his narrative. 

By Bill Hayton,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Why the world can't afford to be indifferent to the simmering conflict in the South China Sea

"The greatest risk today in U.S.-Chinese relations is the South China Sea, through which passes 40% of world trade. . . . Hayton explains how this all came about and points to the growing risks of miscalculation and escalation."-Daniel Yergin, Wall Street Journal

China's rise has upset the global balance of power, and the first place to feel the strain is Beijing's back yard: the South China Sea. For decades tensions have smoldered in the region, but today the threat of a direct…


Book cover of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America
Book cover of Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security
Book cover of The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border

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5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in the Berlin Wall, globalization, and international relations?

The Berlin Wall 30 books
Globalization 117 books