Books like Feeding Cahokia — picked by fans

After forty-two years with the North Dakota Geological Survey, Bluemle is well qualified to take both professional and lay readers through the geological ages that shaped modern-day North Dakota. I appreciate the way he skillfully covers the major regions of the state, such as the Missouri Couteau and the Red River Valley, with lavishly illustrated photos, maps, and diagrams. He also discusses the state’s considerable energy resources. 

Everything I need to know on this topic is in one paperback, and it is a convenient size for taking on a field trip!

This book is an absolute gem. I love it! Perhaps no other work has captured the majesty and recent history of this almost-extinct biome. Award-winning author John Madson’s poetic style won me over.

I am especially inspired by this description of the tallgrass prairie: “It was a flowing emerald in spring and summer when the boundless winds ran across it, a tawny ocean under the winds of autumn, and a stark and painful emptiness when the great long winds drove in from the northwest.”

I recall avidly skimming the text in the library soon after it came out. So many new ideas! I was especially excited with its presentation of the Indigenous management of plant habitats by the judicious use of fire.

From the Preface: “I hope that greater understanding of the stewardship legacy left us by California Indians will foster a paradigm shift in our thinking about the state’s past—particularly with regard to wildland fire.” Slowly, researchers across the Great Plains have begun to understand the complex relationship between climate, litter buildup, and human activity, and this book helped that understanding take root.

This book is full of information, but it is the personality of Buffalo Bird Woman (aka Waheenee, ca 1839-1932) that makes the reading so delightful. America’s best-known Native gardener was launched to fame by the Presbyterian minister and anthropology student Gilbert Wilson (1868-1930), whose extensive interviews of her and her family were incorporated into his dissertation, published as Agriculture of the Hidatsa: An Indian Interpretation.

Renamed and published in book form for posterity, this complete and detailed story of Hidatsa agriculture is historically instructive, and Buffalo Bird Woman’s occasional commentary on the social relations of the Hidatsa people adds to its warmth. 

Anyone intrigued by the ingenuity involved in farming will be fascinated by this time in American history when farming moved from mere subsistence to offering a marketable surplus. Initially, a farmer's concern was modest: first to “raise sufficient corn for the family and their livestock; next, to be assured of an abundant supply of pork.” But as methods improved, there was soon plenty to take to market. A flatboat traveling from Indiana to New Orleans in 1826 could boast 18 barrels of whiskey, 70 barrels of oats, 8,000 pounds of pork, and 300 barrels of corn. 

Unfortunately, demand could tempt producers to abuse: Milk delivered to New York might be shamefully watered down and colored with chalk. World demand for sugar, tobacco, and cotton production fueled slavery, whose brutal conditions this book does not ignore.

The book honors James Boswell’s intuition that defines humans as the “cooking animal,” as humans are the only species living on earth that cook their food. It is an interesting account of the world from a cook’s perspective. Symons maintains that to be truly human we need to become better cooks and to think of cooks as “sharers of food.” His account of the history of cooking is especially interesting and well researched

With unmatched research and brilliant analytical thought, Nicholas Lambert upends long-accepted explanations of a military disaster—the Gallipoli Campaign—that not only rocked Britain in World War I but reverberates in international relations to this very day. His forensic examination of the British government’s symbiotic political, diplomatic, economic, and military decision-making should be required reading for all students of those disciplines. His approach dismantles accepted histories derived from the political assignment of blame and instead gives the reader an understanding of policy decisions tortured by a wide array of then-pertinent circumstances ranging from the price of a loaf of bread to the power of a Russian Tsar. We can hear the echoes of Lambert’s analysis in today’s cable news reports regarding globalization, disruption to wheat markets, and the political impact of inflation. A timeless work indeed. 

Such an important, relevant, and well-written book. Carolyn Steel traces the journey food takes to feed our cities – from the land where it is grown to the waste dumps, where its decay causes environmental degradation. It is a book that looks forward as well as to the past. Hungry City ends with a rallying cry to create a better food system – better for us, for society, for the planet. ‘How food shapes our lives in our future is up to us,’ writes Steel.

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.

A number of years ago, when I was reading through a folder of antislavery petitions at the National Archives, I found a misfiled petition asking for federal funding for an agricultural college in Iowa. Ariel Ron demonstrates how this misfiling illustrates a larger story that runs from agriculture in the early republic to the post-Civil War federal bureaucracy, through the priorities of northern farmers: improvement and justice.

Rather than an industrial behemoth, the pre-Civil War North was dominated by farmers who wanted to modernize their production and who moved from a diffuse program of reform to a campaign for federal funding for state agricultural colleges. Already hostile to slavery, they resented the power of southern planters in Congress who consistently blocked their petitions.

Thus, one of the results of the outbreak of war would be the triumph of a long campaign, deeply entwined with antislavery opinion, that resulted in the… show more.