Here are 100 books that Dirt to Soil fans have personally recommended if you like
Dirt to Soil.
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I grew up on the wild island of Tasmania. I saw the Vietnam War on TV, then went to a farm my father was ‘developing.’ It felt like war. The natural beauty that I’d once played in was destroyed by machines, poisons, and fire. During agricultural college in mainland Australia, I recognized an absence of reverence for Mother Nature. Women were missing from the rural narrative that increasingly held an economics-only mindset when it came to food. I’m a co-founder of Ripple Farm Landscape Healing Hub–a 100-acre farm we’re restoring to natural beauty and producing loved meat and eggs for customers. And I’m a devoted mum, shepherd, and working dog trainer.
This is an oldie but a goldie. Written in 1962, it helped me understand why we are in the corrupt, red-hot mess we are in in terms of the food and climate crisis. It gave me a historical lens on why we are getting sicker, why the land is struggling, and why so many creatures are becoming extinct.
Rachel was slammed for this book at the time, and I feel we need to resurrect her and give her a platform and time in the sunshine to change our modern-day madness. At first, I had to listen in ‘grabs’ because the content was so utterly disturbing. We didn’t listen then! She cites so many actions by government agencies that sanctioned deadly chemicals sprayed over everything and everyone… and it’s happening today with increasing vigor because corporations wield so much power! After listening to the audio, I read the hard copy—it gives…
First published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. "Silent Spring became a runaway bestseller, with international reverberations . . . [It is] well crafted, fearless and succinct . . . Even if she had not inspired a generation of activists, Carson would prevail as one of the greatest nature writers in American letters" (Peter Matthiessen, for Time"s 100 Most Influential People of the Century). This fortieth anniversary edition celebrates Rachel Carson"s watershed…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I am an author and former environmental activist who dropped out of the ‘conflict industry’ in 1997 to start the Quivira Coalition, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building a radical center among ranchers, environmentalists, scientists, and others around practices that improve resilience in working landscapes. For two decades, I worked on the front lines of collaborative conservation and regenerative agriculture, sharing innovative, land-based solutions to food, water, and climate challenges. I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Farming While Black explores an often neglected perspective on regenerative agriculture. It is a “how to” guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists, but Penniman also wants everyone to understand the contributions of African-heritage people to farming. She explores soil fertility, seed selection, using whole foods in culturally appropriate recipes, and sharing stories of ancestors including the trauma associated with slavery and economic exploitation. The book tells the story of Soul Fire Farm, located in upstate New York, a national leader in the food justice movement.
Leah Penniman - recipient of the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award 2019'An extraordinary book...part agricultural guide, part revolutionary manifesto.' VOGUE
'Farming While Black offers a guide to reclaiming food systems from white supremacy.' Bon Appetit
In 1920, 14 percent of all land-owning US farmers were black. Today less than 2 percent of farms are controlled by black people, a loss of over 14 million acres and the result of discrimination and dispossession. While farm management is among the whitest of professions, farm labour is predominantly brown and exploited and people of color disproportionately live in 'food apartheid' neighborhoods…
I am an author and former environmental activist who dropped out of the ‘conflict industry’ in 1997 to start the Quivira Coalition, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building a radical center among ranchers, environmentalists, scientists, and others around practices that improve resilience in working landscapes. For two decades, I worked on the front lines of collaborative conservation and regenerative agriculture, sharing innovative, land-based solutions to food, water, and climate challenges. I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Farmer and author Wendell Berry is a personal hero of mine. From his home in Kentucky, Berry has been writing about regenerative agriculture for decades. The Art of the Commonplace gathers together twenty of his best essays. They articulate a compelling vision for people dissatisfied with the stress, anxiety, disease, and destructiveness of contemporary life. Berry is also the author of numerous works of poetry and fiction.
"Here is a human being speaking with calm and sanity out of the wilderness. We would do well to hear him." ―The Washington Post Book World
The Art of the Commonplace gathers twenty essays by Wendell Berry that offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture. Grouped around five themes―an agrarian critique of culture, agrarian fundamentals, agrarian economics, agrarian religion, and geobiography―these essays promote a clearly defined and compelling vision important to all people dissatisfied with the stress, anxiety, disease, and destructiveness of contemporary American culture.
Why is agriculture becoming culturally irrelevant, and at what cost? What…
Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.
Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…
I am an author and former environmental activist who dropped out of the ‘conflict industry’ in 1997 to start the Quivira Coalition, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building a radical center among ranchers, environmentalists, scientists, and others around practices that improve resilience in working landscapes. For two decades, I worked on the front lines of collaborative conservation and regenerative agriculture, sharing innovative, land-based solutions to food, water, and climate challenges. I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In this book, Australian farmer Charles Massey takes a ‘big picture’ view of regenerative agriculture. It’s full of personal stories but it also goes deep into the history of industrial agriculture, the damage it continues to do, and how we can heal the planet. Massey lays out an inspiring vision for a new agriculture and the vital connections between our soil and our health. It’s a story of how a grassroots revolution can help turn climate change around and build healthy communities, pivoting on our relationship with growing and consuming food.
Part lyrical nature writing, part storytelling, part solid scientific evidence, part scholarly research, part memoir, the book is an elegant manifesto, an urgent call to stop trashing the Earth and start healing it. the Guardian
Perfect for readers of Wilding, Dirt to Soil and English Pastoral!
Call of the Reed Warbler is a clarion call for the global transformation of agriculture, and an in-depth look at the visionary farmers who are revolutionising the way we grow, eat, and think about food.
Using his personal experience as a touchstone, starting as a chemical-dependent farmer with dead soils, he…
I grew up on the wild island of Tasmania. I saw the Vietnam War on TV, then went to a farm my father was ‘developing.’ It felt like war. The natural beauty that I’d once played in was destroyed by machines, poisons, and fire. During agricultural college in mainland Australia, I recognized an absence of reverence for Mother Nature. Women were missing from the rural narrative that increasingly held an economics-only mindset when it came to food. I’m a co-founder of Ripple Farm Landscape Healing Hub–a 100-acre farm we’re restoring to natural beauty and producing loved meat and eggs for customers. And I’m a devoted mum, shepherd, and working dog trainer.
This book tells it like it is… just how toxic the world of industrial agriculture is but also how grassroots farmers are bucking this system with exciting change. New Zealand-born Nicole is an agroecologist… that’s not an angry ecologist… but a person who combines the rich ecology of nature with profitable agriculture, and her book is groundbreaking. (No pun intended)
She’s a soil geek, so this read is satisfying for science nuts. It’s also told so well that it can be understood by anyone. It both confronts and lifts the spirit. On audio, you get to hear her cool NZ accent. She now lives in Montana and coaches people all over the world to be better land stewards.
*Newly Edited Version* Learn a roadmap to healthy soil and revitalised food systems for powerfully address these times of challenge. This book equips producers with knowledge, skills and insights to regenerate ecosystem health and grow farm/ranch profits. Learn how to:- Triage soil health and act to fast-track soil and plant health-Build healthy resilient soil systems-Develop a deeper understanding of microbial and mineral synergies-Read what weeds and diseases are communicating about soil and plant health-Create healthy, productive and profitable landscapes.Globally recognised soil advocate and agroecologist Nicole Masters delivers the solution to rewind the clock on this increasingly critical soil crisis in…
I grew up on the wild island of Tasmania. I saw the Vietnam War on TV, then went to a farm my father was ‘developing.’ It felt like war. The natural beauty that I’d once played in was destroyed by machines, poisons, and fire. During agricultural college in mainland Australia, I recognized an absence of reverence for Mother Nature. Women were missing from the rural narrative that increasingly held an economics-only mindset when it came to food. I’m a co-founder of Ripple Farm Landscape Healing Hub–a 100-acre farm we’re restoring to natural beauty and producing loved meat and eggs for customers. And I’m a devoted mum, shepherd, and working dog trainer.
Divine, divine, divine! This novel taught me so much about the landscape in Appalachia. The female characters were rich and deep. Running throughout the story was the thread of women standing for farming systems that partner with nature versus male characters who want to dominate or decimate.
It was musical and mystical, and I just adored being transported to the cabin in the woods and the rich gardens of the women who knew how Mama Earth rolls. There was also a wonderful exploration of female desire. It was lush and leafy, and I’m so grateful to Barbara for writing this book
It is summer in the Appalachian mountains and love, desire and attraction are in the air. Nature, too, it seems, is not immune. From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and interrupts her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself marooned in a strange place where she must declare or…
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
I grew up on the wild island of Tasmania. I saw the Vietnam War on TV, then went to a farm my father was ‘developing.’ It felt like war. The natural beauty that I’d once played in was destroyed by machines, poisons, and fire. During agricultural college in mainland Australia, I recognized an absence of reverence for Mother Nature. Women were missing from the rural narrative that increasingly held an economics-only mindset when it came to food. I’m a co-founder of Ripple Farm Landscape Healing Hub–a 100-acre farm we’re restoring to natural beauty and producing loved meat and eggs for customers. And I’m a devoted mum, shepherd, and working dog trainer.
I loved the audio version because of author Will Harris' wonderful Georgia accent that brought the book to life. He’s a rancher who saw a broken food system and saw into his own heart and changed things. He said no to chemicals on his farm.
He said no to sending his young cattle to feedlots (a hellish prison for cattle), and he said no to off-farm slaughter. And he said yes to nature thriving and yes to his daughters! The farm and community are now thriving. It has become my number one recommendation for folks stuck in the industrial farming mud… and he’s inspired me to keep leading change for the better.
"If I could have one wish it is that every eater in America would read this book." —Ruth Reichl
From a pioneer of the regenerative agriculture movement, a memoir-meets-manifesto on betting the farm on a better future for our food, animals, land, local communities, and our climate
Raised as a fourth-generation farmer, when Will Harris inherited White Oak Pastures he was a full-time commodity cowboy who played hard and fast with every tool the system offered – chemicals, antibiotics, steroids, and more. His ancestors had built a highly profitable, conventionally-run machine, but over time he found himself disgusted with the…
As a teenager, I visited my uncle, who farmed rice in southern Haiti. I met a community that helped me understand that food is not just about dollars and cents—it’s about belonging, it’s about identity. This experience inspired me to become an aid worker. For the last 20+ years, I have worked to mend broken food systems all over the world. If we don’t get food right, hunger will threaten the social fabric.
I appreciated the author’s voice as a farmer speaking from experience and from the heart. Writing from his tiny farm, Fukuoka pushes back with flair against emerging agro-food paradigms.
I also found this book to be a window into mid-20th century Japan, a culture and period I simply did not know much about. Perhaps the best part of the book is the author's withering rants against industrial, modern agriculture.
Call it “Zen and the Art of Farming” or a “Little Green Book,” Masanobu Fukuoka’s manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food. At the same time, it is a spiritual memoir of a man whose innovative system of cultivating the earth reflects a deep faith in the wholeness and balance of the natural world. As Wendell Berry writes in his preface, the book “is valuable to us because it is at once practical and philosophical. It is an inspiring, necessary book about agriculture…
After graduating with a BA in English, I moved to England to pursue a master’s in Literature and Visual Culture. My focus was on women artists working in London during the Blitz and I wrote my dissertation on Lee Miller, who went on to photograph (and doggedly publish) the liberation of German concentration camps. Later I worked in arts administration and marketing, and didn’t start writing my debut noveluntil I was thirty-five. My work is inspired by my favorite authors from the 1940s:Elizabeth Bowen, Patrick Hamilton, and Penelope Fitzgerald.I’m also drawn to historical fiction about ordinary people in difficult social conditions, especially when there’s a love story involved.
I used to moderate a book club for museum members at what is now the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Love Medicine was chosen by one of our exhibition artists. This astonishing debut is a masterwork about family, poverty, and passion.
The book is set where my grandparents came from, Minnesota and the Dakotas, and illustrates how settlers from Europe (my ancestors) continued to disrupt and destroy Native lives well into the 20th century. Ojibwe spiritual beliefs and Catholicism tangle as tightly as the characters that embody them. Spanning from 1934 to 1985, this novel should not be missed by anyone interested in Native American history.
“The beauty of Love Medicine saves us from being completely devastated by its power.” — Toni Morrison
Set on a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation, Love Medicine—the first novel from master storyteller and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich—is an epic story about the intertwined fates of two families: the Kashpaws and the Lamartines.
With astonishing virtuosity, each chapter of this stunning novel draws on a range of voices to limn its tales. Black humor mingles with magic, injustice bleeds into betrayal, and through it all, bonds of love and family marry the elements into a tightly woven whole that pulses…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
Born into an atheist family and a psychiatrist by background, I identified as a Christian in mid-life then became an interfaith minister. I believe everyone has a birthright to discover their own personal nature and purpose and although religion can help, it’s probably only a phase through which a properly evolved consciousness passes. You can read all the non-fiction and sacred texts you like, but I find spiritual fiction to be the best medium to explore and share fundamentals like this.
I know everyone expects Celestine Prophecy, Buddha of Suburbia, and at least something by Paulo Coelho to be on list but, honestly, I don’t find Celestine to be a very well-written book. Hanif Kureishi’s poignant semi-autobiography has more to do with psychosocial issues than spiritual fulfillment, and I could never really immerse myself in Coelho’s allegories without stifling a quiet yawn.
I prefer Merullo’s 2007 book; in this road trip, the characters of the narrator/driver and his unexpected passenger are well developed and feel honest, and the spiritual wisdom is nicely contextualized within an immediately engaging story rather than the story just being an excuse for a sermon.
When his sister tricks him into taking her guru on a trip to their childhood home, Otto Ringling, a confirmed skeptic, is not amused. Six days on the road with an enigmatic holy man who answers every question with a riddle is not what he'd planned. But in an effort to westernize his passenger--and amuse himself--he decides to show the monk some "American fun" along the way. From a chocolate factory in Hershey to a bowling alley in South Bend, from a Cubs game at Wrigley field to his family farm near Bismarck, Otto is given the remarkable opportunity to…
