Here are 100 books that Wastelanding fans have personally recommended if you like
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I retired in 2019 after 38 years of teaching journalism, environmental studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. About half of my employment time was set aside for writing and editing as part of several endowed professorships I held sequentially between 1990 and 2018. After 2000, climate change (global warming) became my lead focus because of the urgency of the issue and the fact that it affects everyone on Earth. As of 2023, I have written and published 56 books, with about one-third of them on global warming. I have had an intense interest in weather and climate all my life.
This was one of the earliest, and best written, of several books between 1995 and 2022 that have dissected the deadly situation concerning Navajos and Uranium.
Published in 1995, If You Poison Us contains both medical information and graphic personal stories of afflicted miners. This book played an important role in accelerating the political drive to get compensation for ex-miners whose lives had been ravaged by continued exposure to “yellow dirt.”
The supply of uranium that fueled the Cold War came largely from the Four Corners area of the Colorado Plateau. Some of the richest deposits were found on the Navajo Reservation, where about one-fourth of the miners and millers were Native Americans. For nearly three decades in the face of growing evidence that uranium mining was dangerous, state and federal agencies neglected to warn the miners or to impose safety measures in the mines.
I retired in 2019 after 38 years of teaching journalism, environmental studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. About half of my employment time was set aside for writing and editing as part of several endowed professorships I held sequentially between 1990 and 2018. After 2000, climate change (global warming) became my lead focus because of the urgency of the issue and the fact that it affects everyone on Earth. As of 2023, I have written and published 56 books, with about one-third of them on global warming. I have had an intense interest in weather and climate all my life.
Brugge., et al. rests its case on the personal lives of Navajos who became poisoned by the uranium that pervaded nearly the entire Navajo Nation from the 1940s until the mines were closed in the 1970s to about 2015.
Much of the editing was done by Navajos, which provides a clear and strong message describing how the many deaths from uranium poison have shredded the cultural fabric of Navajo life.
It is an intensely personal book that is very strong in its account of these effects on families, elders, and future generations.
Sixty years ago, the United States turned to the tiny atom to unleash the most destructive force known to mankind and bring an end to World War II. Ironically, the uranium used to create the most technologically advanced weapon ever invented came from the land of the most traditional indigenous people of North America, and was dug from the earth with picks and shovels...Lost in the history of this era is the story of the people - the Dine - who pulled uranium out of the ground by hand, who spoke and continue to speak an ancient tongue...By the thousands,…
I retired in 2019 after 38 years of teaching journalism, environmental studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. About half of my employment time was set aside for writing and editing as part of several endowed professorships I held sequentially between 1990 and 2018. After 2000, climate change (global warming) became my lead focus because of the urgency of the issue and the fact that it affects everyone on Earth. As of 2023, I have written and published 56 books, with about one-third of them on global warming. I have had an intense interest in weather and climate all my life.
This book has worthwhile attributes, such as clear writing on the nature of uranium poisoning and its history, personal interviews, and vital coverage of local peoples’ reactions to damage done to their lands and their families, as well as their homelands by profit-mined mining companies.
Vasquez’s coverage centers on the Amazon with a focus on several extractive industries. This book stands alone in its coverage of resource extraction issues in the Amazon Valley because this area has so many other important issues to cover.
For decades, studies of oil-related conflicts have focused on the effects of natural resource mismanagement, resulting in great economic booms and busts or violence as rebels fight ruling governments over their regions' hydrocarbon resources. In Oil Sparks in the Amazon, Patricia I. Vasquez writes that while oil busts and civil wars are common, the tension over oil in the Amazon has played out differently, in a way inextricable from the region itself.
Oil disputes in the Amazon primarily involve local indigenous populations. These groups' social and cultural identities differ from the rest of the population and the diverse disputes over…
I retired in 2019 after 38 years of teaching journalism, environmental studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. About half of my employment time was set aside for writing and editing as part of several endowed professorships I held sequentially between 1990 and 2018. After 2000, climate change (global warming) became my lead focus because of the urgency of the issue and the fact that it affects everyone on Earth. As of 2023, I have written and published 56 books, with about one-third of them on global warming. I have had an intense interest in weather and climate all my life.
Pasternak was one of several journalists who became immersed in the cause of assembling information on exposure of Navajos and other Native American peoples to lethal doses of uranium as a result of mining.
As a veteran who worked with the Los Angeles Times for 24 years, she played an important role in achieving compensation. Yellow Dirt is especially strong on ways in which uranium had pervaded the lives of the Navajo, from the clothes they wore to the food they ate, to the air they breathed.
This investigative feat tells the shocking, heartbreaking story of uranium mining on the Navajo reservation and its terrible legacy of sickness and government neglect, documenting one of the darker chapters in 20th century American history.
Now in paperback, the critically acclaimed Yellow Dirt, “will break your heart. An enormous achievement—literally, a piece of groundbreaking investigative journalism—illustrates exactly what reporting should do: Show us what we’ve become as a people, and sharpen our vision of who we, the people, ought to become” ( The Christian Science Monitor ).
From the 1930s to the 1960s, the United States knowingly used and discarded…
As a retired psychotherapist, I love a good book with complex characters that stand up to analysis. As a moody introvert, I especially enjoy untangling a set of clues in an atmosphere of suspense. Given that I live in a remote, wild area with plenty of snow and extreme weather, I am a good judge of stories about people being pitted against the elements. Finally, I am always curious to learn more about indigenous cultures since I live near more tribal land than anywhere in the US except Alaska. And, of course, I’m a mystery writer!
His writing is as crisp and startling as the turquoise skies over the New Mexico desert. Laconic Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn quickly felt like a familiar friend.
The story haunted me, especially the scary scene at the Shalako ceremonial in a Zuni village.
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!
The Edgar-Award winning second novel in New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman’s bestselling and highly acclaimed Leaphorn and Chee series
“Hillerman is a wonderful storyteller.”—New York Times Book Review
Two Native American boys have vanished into thin air, leaving a pool of blood behind them. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police has no choice but to suspect the very worst, since the blood that stains the parched New Mexico ground once flowed through the veins of one…
Even though I’m from humid DC, I’ve been drawn to the desert since I first set foot there as a kid on a family road trip. Now, I’m lucky enough to live in Utah, home to some of the world’s most legendary desert landscapes. One reason I love the desert is the otherworldly scenery: uncanny arches, bizarre hoodoos, and sand dunes you could disappear into. Before your eyes, layers of geologic time unfold in epochs. The desert is a great place for contemplating the past and future—and for great adventures, with endless sandstone walls to climb, slick rock to bike, and sagebrush-lined trails to hike.
You would probably recognize the landscape of Monument Valley from classic Westerns and other films. Stagecoach, the HBO series Westworld, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Forrest Gump are just a few! But aside from a film set, this iconic setting is, first and foremost, the home of the Navajo people.
Based on extensive interviews with Navajo residents of Monument Valley, this book weaves together a portrait of the place and people, from Indigenous cultural traditions and the dawn of Hollywood to mining and the significance of the monuments themselves.
I’m a piano technician who’s had the incredible fortune of getting to know and work for just about all my childhood heroes. I’m also a recording artist who’s produced several recordings that have made it into the Billboard Top 20, had two PBS specials, and whose music has been streamed over 75 million times around the globe. At the beginning of the pandemic, I began putting pen to paper to share some of the extraordinary experiences I’ve had with music icons and how being in that jet stream helped me tune in to my mission as an artist.
As with Tara Westover’s book, I was inspired by David Crow’s story of self-determinism in the face of incredible adversity. David was raised in abject poverty on a Navajo reservation. His father was a “violent ex-con who forced his son to commit crimes.”
I related to David’s unwavering resolve, forging his way into college and ultimately creating a successful lobbying firm in D.C. I was drawn in by his simple, unadorned writing and was profoundly moved by his willingness to tell his life story unvarnished and unapologetically.
Raised on Nancy Drew who was herself outspoken and independent, I’m attracted to stories about barrier-breaking determined women who don’t back down from a fight. While many of the heroines of fantasy fiction have special abilities or can work magic, being able to stand up for oneself and speak one’s mind in the face of opposition is itself a superpower. I enjoy seeing how other authors portray it, what wrongs the heroines aim to put right, and how they do it.
I am a huge fan of Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn and Chee novels. I was privileged to meet Mr. Hillerman at a writers convention. He was gracious and supportive of other authors and I learned a lot from his presentation. The main characters of his series are two male Navajo police officers but in The Fallen Man he introduced Bernadette “Bernie” Manuelito. In that story she is a new officer with the tribal police but inSkeleton Man she has become a federal Customs Patrol officer. Smart and capable, she holds her own, be it in the office with senior male officers or in the harsh, challenging American Southwest desert territory that is her “beat.” As an indoor girl, I was almost more impressed with the latter as I was with her role in solving the case.
“In his masterly reworking of this powerful myth, Hillerman creates a kachina for contemporary times. . . . No wonder Hillerman’s stories never grow old. Like myths, they keep evolving with the telling.”— New York Times Book Review
From the enduring "national and literary cultural sensation" (Los Angeles Times) Tony Hillerman, a crackling tale of myth, mystery, and murder featuring the legendary Leaphorn and Chee.
Though he may be retired, Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn hasn’t lost his curiosity or his edge. He’s eager to help Sergeant Jim Chee and his fiancée Bernie Manuelito with their latest case—clearing an…
I was a computer programmer (BA and MA in math) for several organizations, including NASA and the Savannah River Ecology Lab before retirement, went to the Clarion and Tulane SF&F Workshops, and read the slush pile for Amazing/Fantastic. I’ve done a lot of theatre as actor and lighting tech, have always liked to hike in the woods, have written 11 novels (including 3 published SF novels), had 5 plays given full production, and have 2 CDs of my original songs. In my copious spare time, I sleep.
LaFarge’s first novel, Laughing Boy, about the love affair between a reservation Indian and one who had been raised in a religious school, won the 1930 Pulitzer Prize. LaFarge spent much of his life fighting for Native American rights, sometimes in the “dark of Washington.” I wanted to grow up to be an Indian. I still do.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize: “A romantic idyll played out in the rhythms and meanings of a vanished Navajo world.” —The Denver Post
Laughing Boy is a model member of his tribe. Raised in old traditions, skilled in silver work, and known for his prowess in the wild horse races, he does the Navajos of T’o Tlakai proud. But times are changing. It is 1914, and the first car has just driven into their country. Then, Laughing Boy meets Slim Girl—and despite her “American” education and the warnings of his family, he gives in to desire and marries her.
I am, and always have been, stimulated by a spiritual connection to my world beyond the laws of physics and men. My hiking, climbing, and trail running have taken me to breathless places imbued with auras and presences I don’t understand but readily accept. And I am filled with the same spirituality when performing or listening to music. I have no ego to shun that which I don’t understand, for I know there is so much beyond me. Some authors describe this intangible better than others in their stories; I hope I am among the former.
R. Allen Chappell’s novel resonates with me from the reality of his depiction of life among the Navajo, reflecting his personal familiarity with the people. His protagonists portray diverse, very human characters with all their inherent weaknesses and strengths, tested by the hard life on the Rez. In Magpie Speaks, Charlie Yazzie’s unflappably grounded outlook balances Paul T’Sosi ’s immersive belief in the old ways, a traditional way of thinking that permits the existence of witches who can cause him harm with their supernatural powers. His depiction of Harley Ponyboy, a sometime drunk (“just because I’m drinking now doesn’t make me a drunk”) is both sympathetic and alarming to me. Chappell’s characters are real.
Dreams tell old man Paul T’Sosi he’s dying. So why is Navajo trickster, Magpie, trying to tell him a far more terrifying secret? Hungry for revenge, Ma’iitsoh Dine’, the Navajo Wolf, is out for blood. Summoning his darkest powers, the Witch of Ganado circles tribal investigator Charlie Yazzie’s young son. Some may survive the witch’s evil vendetta, but others will die to settle an old score. The unexpected happens when a woman from the past re-emerges to take control in this fast paced thriller critics now hail as the best yet of Chappell’s sensational new southwestern mystery series.
