The best books about North America

Finally, expanding outward even further in space and time and going far beyond my Clash of Eagles series source material, Tim Flannery’s book covers the entire geological, ecological, and (yes) human history of the North American continent, from its formative years 65 million years ago through to its “discovery” by Europeans, and the effects those colonizing influences had on the peoples, flora, and fauna. I learned so much from this book that I still think about it almost daily, and especially so when I travel around today’s US in all its depth, breadth, and glory.

The Falcon was one of the many books I studied while researching The Spirit Keeper, and John Tanner’s contemporary description of life among the Ojibwa continues to haunt me. Although captivity narratives were once very popular in America, Tanner did not achieve fame or fortune from his life story. What he did achieve, however, was a clear record of the steady destruction of the rich and varied native cultures of North America as Colonial forces slowly eroded the entire ecosystem of the continent. Because this story was written shortly after the events described, it’s a challenging read, but once you get into the rhythm of the 19th century language, you won’t be able to put the book down.

Arguably, the very first strategy guide for the North American market. This compendium covered 90 titles for the N.E.S., including maps and mini-guides for 30 of the most popular games. As a twelve-year-old boy, this book was one of my prized possessions … and continues to be a source of fond memories and inspiration.

The Undaunted Garden is one of the most important garden books ever written for American gardens.

I reference it constantly and you will too. While focusing on the challenges of gardening on the front range of North America, this book is valuable for any serious gardener gardening anywhere in America as the principles laid out in this book are useful no matter the size of your garden or where you are gardening.

I think the photography is superb and help tell the story of Lauren’s journey creating beautiful and sustainable gardens over the years.

Robert Heinlein excels himself in this story narrated in the first person by a young woman, who is not really a human but rather a synthetic person but one you can relate to. Published in 1982, when much of the technology it describes was not yet in the realm of possibility, this book shows us an image of a chaotic world that may well be in our future. Serious issues sprinkled through this book’s pages are hidden between fun, fast action, a bit of licentious behavior, and some absurdity. Fun is guaranteed.

A tough choice, this one. I read so many books about Cahokia. But Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians goes into sufficiently deep and absorbing detail on the Cahokian site – which you should go see for yourself if you get the chance, at the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, Collinsville, Illinois – for you to appreciate the true magnitude of the Mississippian achievement. And it has lots of photos, illustrations, and maps. For a quicker introductory read and perhaps more evocative descriptions, Pauketat’s Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi might be for you. Both books, written by an archeologist of more than usual depth, perceptiveness, and descriptive skill, invoke a bygone North American city of awesome power.

Every geology book collection should include this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic. McPhee travels with four different U.S. geologists, visiting their outcrops and laboratories while tracing the evolution of geologic thought and discoveries. McPhee has the eye of a scientist, the soul of a poet, and the pen (keyboard?) of a master author. The result is fluid and beautiful writing about science and those who practice it. 

When I started graduate school in the mid-2000s, there were only a few Native powers that scholars considered empires—primarily the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas.

But in 2008, along came the Finnish historian Pekka Hämäläinen with the stunning thesis that the Comanche confederacy became a horseback empire on the southern Plains that flourished from ca. 1720 to 1848. In his telling, the Comaches were an expansive polity that thrived through raiding other Natives and colonial outposts, and by trafficking in bison robes, captives, guns, food, and other trade goods.

Not every reader will be convinced by the “empire” argument, but none can deny that Hämäläinen reveals a new picture of a dynamic Native power in the heart of the continent.

I love epic heroes. From the first page, this author (who was actually two collaborators) presents a hero that is so larger-than-life, it’s just breathtaking. The heroes and villains in this imagined wasteland are so very fun to read, even when the carnage is eye-watering in severity. I’ve never experienced anything else like this. 

Some readers want to see history as well as read it. Thankfully, there are many books about the Seven Years’ War that offer loads of illustrations, both from the era and produced more recently by illustrators. René Chartrand is the author of many such books, one of which is this one about the forts of New France. The author and illustrator present in-depth information about such French forts as Chambly, St. Frédéric (Crown Point), Carillon (Ticonderoga), Duquesne (Pittsburgh, PA), Ouiatenon (Quebec) and Vincennes (IN). As with all of Chartrand’s books, this one enriches our understanding of the Seven Years’ War, in this case by looking more carefully at the French side.

The only thing better than reading about bees is getting outside and seeing some! This book combines good pictures with descriptions of behavior and habitats that will help identify what you find – if not to species, then at least to the major families and groups. Though focused on North America, many of the same general types of bees can be encountered anywhere: sweat bees, miners, diggers, leafcutters, cuckoo bees, and more. In addition to the identification tips, the book includes a generous introduction to bee biology and behavior, as well as a primer on how to improve the bee habitat in any yard through the addition of flowers, nesting sites, and more.

This book will challenge your notion of what a poem is or can be. Let it. Subtitled “Diagram poems,” these works mix both word and illustration to get at their playful effects. The illustrations come from “found” or ephemeral sources, e.g., a manual on textiles, or a guide to common beetles of North America, or a grammar on computer languages, or the layouts of American playgrounds. The interplay in the poems creates a wonderful uncanniness. The friction, say, caused when you read “You are special” next to a few numbered puzzle pieces in Figure A. and “Everyone is special” next to a completed puzzle in Figure B, and yet when you try to superimpose the one on the other, you realize that some of the pieces have had to adjust themselves to fit the whole. The sudden epiphany is: How special is anyone? And yet answering that question… show more.

Dee Brown’s landmark 1970 book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee provided a beautiful and much-needed antidote to the ‘march of the pioneers’ and Manifest Destiny narratives that held sway over much of the history of the western United States from 1850s-1890.

Over time, however, Brown’s book (and more specifically the massacre at Wounded Knee) became calcified as the ‘end point’ of histories about indigenous people. Treuer challenges this perspective by showcasing native resistance, resilience, and flourishing in the wake of Wounded Knee. Indigenous history is deep, varied, and filled with fascinating people and events—Treuer shows us how to find hope and joy in history even though there is also profound pain.

In my quest to learn about the inner lives of 19th-century prostitutes, I found three memoirs, all gold mines. Demi-mondaines always used a stage name and that’s what the eponymous Madeleine chose. Even though she wasn’t a writer by trade, her story as a young “public woman” in the 1890s is riveting, and heartbreaking. When Madeleine’s autobiography was first published by Harper & Brothers in 1919, it caused a scandal and led to a lawsuit against the publisher. Harper eventually successfully defended itself but still ended up withdrawing the book from circulation. It wouldn’t be available to the public again for nearly 70 years. 

This was one of my go-to non-fiction books when researching for my book. It gives a great sense of the history and variety of the mounds in the United States. It's estimated there were once thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands. A few have been preserved, most have been forgotten or obliterated.

This anthology makes the case that an empire of extraction has existed from the dawn of the colonial era until deep into the 21st Century. The essays in the “Health and Environmental Justice” section are both fascinating and disturbing. And how could they not be disturbing with such words as these in chapter titles? “Uranium Mine and Mine Tailings.” “Arsenic Pollution.” “Quebec Asbestos.” Nearly every chapter in this section emphasizes the impact on indigenous populations with the chapter title on the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, being particularly stark. It opens with this: “If the Rivers Ran South.”

A book that falls between Lummis and Steinbeck chronologically is William Francis Butler’s The Wild North Land: Being the Story of a Winter Journey, with Dogs, Across Northern North America, an account of his retracing of the route of the 18th-century Scottish explorer Alexander McKenzie who traversed much of Canada from Lake Chipewyan in Alberta to the Pacific Ocean. Butler had a dog team whose leader was Cerf-Vola, who distinguished himself for his sagacity and strength. Ultimately, Butler retired him from sled duty to dog companion. That relationship did not prevent Butler from giving the dog to an acquaintance when he returned to England, saying that it broke his heart when he had to lay aside his emotions for “the sterner stuff of civilization.”

John Brown is the Founder of the Business Enterprise Institute (BEI,) the organization that grants the Certified Exit Planner (CExP)designation. This is, without a doubt, the most comprehensive book on the options, strengths, and pitfalls of exiting your business. It is, however, pretty dry for the average owner, and is much more useful as a reference work for professional advisors.

The long titular story from Peninsula Sinking is about three phases in a young man’s life, and his maturation from a guy who does crazy stunts to get attention from the cool kids to someone who, full of regrets and hopes, grapples with highly evolved intellectual and ethical conundrums and finds safety only in love. Its final third opens with this enticement: “Imagine it’s you facing the loss of the still-ripening cherries between your legs.” Throughout the book, Huebert proves himself a wizard with figurative, sensual writing, layering bizarre images with tricky turns of phrase. We are reminded that “there were palm trees on Antarctica once.” Anything can happen.

This collection is filled with great energy, stunning images, and overall great stories—all of them prominently featuring non-human animals, and their interactions with humans, in some cases tackling complex ethical dilemmas with considerable insight.

In the 19th century, it was believed that if a way could be found through North America’s ice barrier, beyond lay an open sea offering ships a shortcut to the Pacific.  The quest to find it became a litany of disaster, suffering, human spirit stretched to breaking point and heroic survival. Canada’s greatest historian, Pierre Burton, turns factual accounts into a riveting read, ‘a cliff-hanger with colorful characters’ as Newsweek described it. This is another book I hate to lend for fear I’ll never get it back.